


The Lonely Sea and The Sky

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angel Castiel, Angelic Grace, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Merman Dean, Mutual Pining, Pining, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Star Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 09:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6369844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean, a little lost and a little lonely, finds himself wishing on a star one night, he doesn't expect anything to come of it, and certainly not for the star in question to fall right out of the sky. The very last thing that he could have possibly anticipated is Castiel - winged, angry and looking for the grace that he lost in the fall, so that he can get back to Heaven.</p><p>Dean's a little fascinated by Castiel, and Castiel is intrigued by Dean and his seafaring life. But Castiel has to go back to Heaven, and finding the grace has to be his first priority, even though it often seems he would rather put Dean first. But Dean knows it's foolish to hope. After all, a bird may fall in love with a fish - but where would they live?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the Dean/Cas Reverse Bang 2016. I was lucky enough to be able to claim the gorgeous art below by the absolutely wonderful Pax, who lives on tumblr at [paxdracona](http://paxdracona.tumblr.com) and posts her art on [scribblyscratch](http://scribblyscratch.tumblr.com). Please send her all the love! She was so, SO fantastic to work with, and, as is pretty darn obvious, she's MAD talented.  
> A huge, huge thank you to [Michaela](http://thebloggerbloggerfun.tumblr.com) for helping me plot and for beta'ing, and to [Citra](http://castihalo.tumblr.com) for beta'ing and leaving large comical faces all over my word document. You two are worth your weight in pure gold.  
> And a shout out to my cat, for having no chill and constantly trying to sit on my laptop as I wrote this.  
> 

Once upon a time, there was a merman lying on the rocks above his ocean home, in the deepest hour of the night. The ghostly light from the full moon shone out over the dark water, glossing the crests of the waves with silver. The stars were bright – even brighter than the best, brightest dreams, and far more numerous.

For the best, brightest dreams are the ones that come true. And those do not come around very often.

The merman’s name was Dean, and he was not very old, but not young enough to be young anymore. He was somewhere in between. In the moonlight, the scales of his long, long tail glittered dark emerald, and the water drops caught in his short brown hair and on his eyelashes shimmered, stars in their own liquid galaxy. Dean only had eyes for the constellations above him, the tip of his tail dappling the surface of the water around the rocks where he lay.

He was lonely.

It was not the comfortable sensation of solitude that came to Dean when he was gathering coral to decorate his home, or when he was looking for pearls, or riding the great rollers into shore for the fun of the feeling of falling – of being swept up by something so much stronger than himself. Dean enjoyed being alone, and often; but tonight, under the light of the moon, he was something worse than alone. His heart was heavy, his eyes sheened over with saltwater of his own body’s making.

It hurt to be lonely. He hadn’t known, before.

He’d come away from the Feast of the Spring Solstice, his throat too tight to tell anyone quite why he’d needed to leave. All he knew was that he’d been watching the guests at his father’s table – the great and the good of the Merqueen’s court, decked out in their glossiest finery – and had been suddenly struck by how different he was to every single one of them. Not that they weren’t good people, each important in their own way, and Dean knew that, but… they were all so happy with their life beneath the waves. They were all settled, they were the rocks on the seabed; the storms passing overhead didn’t disturb them. Dean – Dean was sand, was flotsam. He’d looked around at familiar faces, and felt homeless in his own home.

And he’d turned, as always, to his brother. Just a look from Sam was usually enough to settle Dean back into himself – to remind him of who he was. _Big brother Dean, I’m glad you’re here._ And it was enough, always.

Except – except Dean had looked to Sam, tonight, and Sam’s eyes had been on someone else. On Jess, lovely Jess, his new bride. And it had put a shark tooth scratch right over Dean’s heart, deep enough to scar, just like that – because deep within himself, Dean knew that if he’d gone over to Sam and asked, Sam would have given all his time to his older brother. But Dean didn’t want to do that, because – Dean only had to look at Sam to see how happy he was, and – how could he have ruined that? How could he have put his not-old-not-young in-between body in between their bodies? He loved Sam. He loved Jess, too; she was kind and good, a soul prettier than a feather star. Dean was so painfully proud of Sam for loving someone like her.

And he was so, so lonely.

The waves washed in and out over the rocks, sighing and trickling like tears. The darkness was a small comfort, making the infinite reaches of the ocean and sky invisible, giving Dean his own tiny world to live in – a world where there was no one else but him, and the moon, and the pinpricks of the faraway stars. No one else to miss. It wasn’t the being alone that hurt, Dean thought, feeling the pain in his heart shift and change, ebb and flow with the waves. It was the missing, the sense of absence. The could be, but is not.

Ah, perhaps he was being melodramatic. Things would be back to normal tomorrow.

Wouldn’t they?

He didn’t know. He thought perhaps he should allow himself a night of sadness, on the strength of the possibility. He had to feel it, sometimes, even though he didn’t want to. He never, ever wanted to.

Dean looked upwards, and remembered something his mother used to say to him – long ago, when she’d still lived. _The stars are watching over you,_ she’d said. _They listen. They will keep you safe._

“You’ll keep me safe,” Dean remembered saying to her, as though she were being stupid. She’d only brought him close and kissed his forehead. Now, alone in the night, Dean closed his eyes, tried to remember the feeling of her arms around him.

When he opened his eyes again, everything was still the same. The night was implacable.

“Please,” Dean said, softly, speaking upwards. The waves swallowed the sound. “Please…” He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. The stars didn’t care. If they really kept merpeople safe, there were a hundred things they would already have stopped from happening.

Even still, Dean had no one else to talk to.

“You probably can’t hear me,” he scratched out over a tight throat. “I know you can’t. But if you… if anyone’s there…” His voice was cracking like dry, brittle seashells. “I know I’ve asked before. But I need you now more than I ever have. If you’re there…” Somewhere to the east, the wind was sighing through caves, groaning for lost things. Dean sat up, keeping his eyes on the skies above. The heels of his hands ground into the seaweed and sand on the rock beneath him.

“I’m calling it in,” he said, more firmly. He still sounded a little thick with sadness, but he cleared his throat roughly and pressed on. “You hear me? I’m calling it in. I was told you’d watch over me. I’m here now. I need help. Please, I… I don’t know who else to turn to. She said –” Dean sucked in a breath, swallowed hard. “She said you’d be here, you’d watch over me. Please… _help me._ ”

The sea seemed to still for a moment; the wind’s lament softened. Dean waited, unblinking, staring above…

A light changed, in the north.

Dean frowned, narrowing his eyes.

No. It wasn’t possible…

His heart started to beat a little harder.

Distant, tiny, underwhelming; so small as to be forgettable, a star was moving.

It couldn’t be.

And yet – it wasn’t that the world was moving below, as it always moved beneath the skies, no – it wasn’t that. This star was on a different path to all the others, seeming to gather speed, throwing out a tail behind it made of lighted dust.

Dean’s mouth dropped open.

 _This… has to be a coincidence,_ he thought. Shooting stars were rare, but not unheard of. So strange that it should happen now – some kind of sign from the heavens – but it wasn’t… it wasn’t an actual _answer_ to his prayer.

Dean watched the star fly, his own tail batting at the waves in agitation, anticipation. It couldn’t be, he knew it couldn’t. This was a cruel trick of the skies, this was the universe laughing at him.

And yet. The star – it was growing _larger._

Dean sat up fully, tilting back his head to watch, mouth open. The circle of brightness with its flaring tail was flying this way, down to the sea. Dean shook his head in disbelief. The stars could not hear. The stars could not be answering his call… it could not be.

When the wind drew in its breath, when the waves drew back before splashing over the rocks, Dean thought – Dean _imagined_ – that he could hear it. A low roar, getting closer…

It could not be.

It _could not be._

The light in the sky was growing brighter, painfully bright, and Dean raised his hand to shield his eyes. The star… it seemed to be right overhead now, still small and far away, but – definitely approaching.

Beside Dean, there was a soft _plink,_ only just audible over the sound of the waves.

Dean, his sharp ears catching the sound, looked to his left. There was something small resting on the water, bright and glinting sharply in the moonlight. Dean watched it for a moment, his breath short in his chest. He looked up again, and the light was a little closer.

Dean was panicking. This couldn’t really be happening, could it? He hadn’t actually… the star wasn’t _really…_

 _Plink. Plink. Plink._ Gentle noises, barely a fingertip touch on the surface of the dark, clear seas. Dean stared at the strange, glittering things that were falling all around him, not understanding. _Plink._ One landed on the crest of a wave that rolled over the rock where Dean sat, his eyes wide, and it was softly set down beside his clenched fist.

Dean swallowed hard, and reached over with clumsy, sand-covered fingers, and picked it up.

It lay in his palm, cold and shining. A shard of ice, smooth as a gem, finer than a diamond and twice as clear. When Dean held it up to the moon, a dark rainbow cut through it, and Dean sucked in a breath and dropped it.

It fell back into the ocean, unaffected by the brine. _Plink, plink, plink,_ more shards, all polished to a shine. _Plink, plink, plink plink plink plink plink…_

Dean raised his hands above his head as the soft falling of icedrops became a shower, which turned into a storm; the glassy shards were pouring over his shoulders, not cutting his rough skin but bruising him. When he held out his hands, they were overflowing in bare moments with diamonds as cold as snow…

And all the while, the light above was growing. Its ghostly blueish tint was turning the ocean’s dark swell to an eerie turquoise, strobing rainbows through the diamonds on the surface, and then – quite suddenly –

_BOOM._

A wave of sound shuddered the cold, damp, spray-laced air, loud as the footfall of a giant - and at the same time, Dean felt a great whipcrack of heat slit from the top of his head all the way to the base of his spine. He screamed, haloed in sudden stark brightness - and then the pain was gone, the light was gone, and all that Dean could hear was his own involuntary gasps, his own thudding heart.

Dean dived, even as a second great BOOM rent the air. He fled into the depths, and above him, the soundwave pounded across the water, rippling the very ocean itself for miles and miles. As he swam and swam, down and down and away and down, Dean could only see light streaking through the water, and hear a shrill, piercing, bone-breaking shriek from above… it grew louder, and louder, and Dean’s head felt as though it were going to burst, and he tried to keep swimming but his vision was clouding and his arms were weakening and all he could hear was his heart, his heart, his heart…

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

And then only darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean woke up, and his body wasn’t his own.

His arms were loose in the waves, his tail flipped over his head, his muscles weighed down with pressure. He’d drifted down and down, into a dark place. The water tasted strange here: thicker, stronger. Worse.

Dean blinked, trying to clear his vision. He could hear the thrum of large creatures moving, somewhere in the blackness. It was time to move.

He reclaimed himself inch by inch, flexing his fingers, his arms, stretching out his tail. As ever, he knew which way was up without understanding how he knew. Trusting his instinct, he started to swim, keeping as quiet as he could.

He wasn’t sure where he was going. His only certain direction was – up.

Through the slow-moving whirlpool in his mind, Dean felt memories arising. A diamond on his palm, cold. The smell of the sea changing as it was filled with ice. Shrieking… and a light in the sky, a light that moved… a burning pain in his head and his back...

Dean gulped down a mouthful of brine, coming to a halt as he remembered what had happened. What he’d  _ done.  _ He reached instinctively to the back of his neck, feeling for a wound of some kind, for the thicker wetness of blood - but he found nothing. He was unhurt.

He looked upwards, his tail fanning through the water to keep his body steady. He was near enough to the surface to see lighter water above him – but he could see no movement, no explosions of fire, no screaming, fleeing sea creatures…

Perhaps he had dreamed it all.

He kept heading upwards, his muscles working hard, webbed fingers pushing against the water. His heart was pounding in his chest, eyes wide open with fear. What if the star he’d caused to fall – what if it was… dangerous somehow, poisonous, perhaps? What if he’d accidentally managed to doom himself and everyone in the Merpeople’s Court by summoning it?

Perhaps those ice shards that had fallen would melt into toxic liquid. Dean began to imagine that he could already feel tendrils of venom seeping into his blood through the water he inhaled. Maybe he should stay away, pretend he had never been here tonight - after all, no one would ever suspect that he, Dean, had somehow managed to make a star topple out of the sky…

The voice in Dean’s head was telling him to stop making for the rock, but it didn’t speak his body’s language. He pushed forwards, heedless of rational thought. He had to see - he had to know what he’d done. He had to try to put it right, if he could.

When he was only feet from the surface, Dean slowed.

Above him, the waves still seemed to be rolling and swelling, disturbed by something that - on another night - could have been only the wind... except Dean could still see the ice shards, glistering. He took a deep breath to try to steady himself, and realised that the ocean here tasted of something sharp, something fresh – like air, pure air, or clean unsalted water.

It was the ice, Dean knew. It was melting, and it was turning the sea around it to purity. He would not be poisoned by this.

With a single flex of his tail, Dean rose higher – and broke the surface. The rocks where he’d been lying were only metres away from him, jagged and seaweed-lacquered.

The waves swirled, not large enough to swallow him, but strong enough to push him around. Dean fought with them, searching for any sign of – a star, whatever that looked like. Rock? Dean imagined something huge, pitted, old, smoking with dust and debris, burning a hole in the ocean with sheer heat and weight – perhaps it had already sunk, and he was looking in the wrong place –

A single hand broke the surface of the waves, barely ten feet from where Dean was struggling to stay afloat. 

Dean let out the breath he’d been holding in a gasp, a rough cry; the hand managed to grasp hold of the rocks, the sand-covered seaweed-laced rocks where Dean had been resting only minutes beforehand. A moment later, a second hand followed, white skin stretched thin, fingers rigid and desperate. Dean, caught in the tug of the current, prepared to plunge forwards, to help – but then the hands’ grip seemed to strengthen. Gradually, with obvious strain, a figure hauled itself up out of the ocean, and onto the rocks above. It lay flat, unmoving.

Dean could only watch, his mouth open, catching spray. Diamonds chinked against his skin, cooling him after the hard swim to get here. The figure… it didn’t move, only lay utterly still, like a wounded gull in shock. Dean stared at it, willing it to get up, to move… what was it, a human? A merperson? Dean hadn’t seen its tail… in the rush of the waves, he hadn’t seen much about it at all. But there was something about the way that its back was curved that had his heart in his throat in a kind of excitement, a kind of horror, a sense that something was not normal.

The figure on the rocks moved, finally. One arm, two arms, pushing against the stone. One leg, two legs, bearing the weight of its body, finding balance. It stood…

And on its back. One wing, two wings. Black and limp with water, soaked through, with diamonds glittering in between the sodden feathers, dripping off and back into the sea. It turned, its face falling under the moonlight… Dean dropped down so that only his eyes were above the water, barely minding the way that he was splashed over and over by the waves, so that he wouldn’t be seen.

The figure spread its wings, and shook them. A hundred glittering diamonds were scattered over the rocks and into the sea. The winged creature’s face was – Dean swallowed hard – a thousand kinds of beautiful: solemn and fine-boned, with high cheeks and full lips and smooth skin. Its body was unmarked, and it wore nothing at all. Dean watched it stretch its legs, graceful and strange, the spray splattering over its elegant body… its dripping wings. Dean wished he could hush the ocean itself; he had the sensation that something this beautiful, this…  _ heavenly,  _ shouldn’t be touched by the salt and brine.

He also had the sensation that this creature, whatever it was –was dangerous, somehow. The very air around it seemed to crackle with power; the way it moved its body was strong despite its obvious uncertainty. There was something about it that sent electricity chasing down Dean’s spine, put an extra volt of terrified pounding into his already racing heart.

“No,” the figure said, in a voice deeper than the ocean, and Dean’s heart almost stopped. The creature had its hands pressed to its chest, eyebrows drawn down into a frown. “No…”

Dean allowed the current to pull him closer to the rocks, slipping around the side where they were tall enough to hide his prying eyes. He wrapped his fingers around the top of a jutting stone, protected from the buffeting waves in a little peaceful lee, and watched.

“It cannot be,” the creature said. “It cannot  _ be _ .”

It sounded angry, Dean thought to himself. Where had it come from? Was it looking for the star, too?

“This – cannot – be –” it said furiously, and then surprised Dean by raising its voice, shouting above the swell of the waves. “Where are you? Summoner? You called me down, and **here I am.** What will you have of me?”

Dean’s mouth dropped open, as realisation swept over him.

This… was the star.

_ This was the star. _

His disbelief was so intense that when the creature – the star – shouted again, even louder, Dean lost his grip on the rock and slipped back down under the waves, only managing to hold his place and avoid being swept up and dashed against the rocks closer to shore by huddling into his peaceful lee, kicking his tail enough to bring himself back above the water.

“ **Where are you?** ” the creature demanded. The sound of Dean falling had been a quiet saw of scales and skin on stone, barely audible to Dean himself over the roar of the sea – and yet there was sudden silence afterwards, as though the creature had noticed, was listening. Dean kept as still as he could, barely breathing; after several long seconds, he could control his curiosity no longer. With a powerful kick of his tail, he raised himself back up higher out of the water, wrapped his fingers around the top of the rock over which he’d been watching, and tentatively lifted himself up, up, up… he could see over the rock once more –

And he found himself almost nose-to-nose with the solemn, curious, water-sheened face of a fallen star, crouching forward as though about to peer over the rock down to where Dean had been hiding. Diamonds were still shimmering in its black wings, held aloft behind its back. Its eyes were blue, profoundly blue, bluer than the sea; Dean thought the waters themselves could drown in a colour so clear, so beautiful, so cold. He gulped. The intensity of the gaze was too strong, and he looked down. The creature’s fingers and toes were splayed out to keep its balance, unwebbed and thin as a human’s.

“You summoned me,” the star said, staring at him. Dean let out a shaky breath, and met those eyes once more. 

They were too beautiful. Dean could feel his heart aching in his chest, just looking at them. He had no words, nothing. The star was so close to him. He’d  _ caused  _ this. He’d brought a star tumbling down out of the skies.

“ _ You summoned me, _ ” the star said again, moving a little closer. Dean found himself breathless, staring and staring while the waves rolled around him.

He managed to nod.

“S-sorry,” he said, his grip tight on the rock to stop himself from falling again. “I - I didn’t think you’d be… I didn’t think you could…”

The star waited for Dean to finish, but he’d run out of words. He could only stare and stare and stare, drinking in the face of the creature before him. The star seemed similarly entranced, its eyes sweeping Dean’s features, lingering on the fan of green, scaled skin behind his ears.

“You aren’t human,” the star said, frowning. Dean shivered, the voice, heavy with celestial power, thrumming through his body. He swallowed.

“You’re one to talk,” he said weakly. The star seemed a little charmed by his response. Their faces were close enough that Dean could see the twinkle in its eye, ever so slight – but undeniable.

Its soft-looking lips twitched upwards, too. They were as pale as its skin.

“I didn’t – I didn’t mean to…” Dean began, gasping as a stronger wave almost swept him away. The star’s face fell back into solemn, colder lines.

“You didn’t mean to call me down from Heaven?” it said. “So. I am trapped here for nothing.” Its lips tightened, and it stared at Dean for another long moment before turning abruptly away, standing up. Spray kissed its naked legs as it walked away; Dean hesitated for a moment, and then awkwardly pulled himself up onto the rock, following the star as it began to pick its way through the stones towards the shore.

“Wait!” Dean called. The star turned back, its face half-lit by glowing moonlight, half left in shadow. It saw Dean’s tail for the first time, and its jaw slackened; Dean, surrounded by the diamonds and feeling spray on his bare shoulders, shifted under its stare. “Wait – just wait a second –”

“You trapped me here,” the star said in its deep, deep voice, deeper than the waves that broke against the stones. “But I am not your captive. I do not answer to your commands. I will not wait. I will rest until morning, and gather my strength. Then I will seek a way to return to Heaven.”

Its voice was absolute, and final. It was a paragon of righteousness and authority. Dean bowed his head before the weight of its will.

“Okay,” Dean said. “Okay. I get it. Rest. Um, if you want to.”

The star gave him a sharp, sidelong look, before lying down. Dean saw that it had managed to find a gathering of soft, dry-looking sand, in the shelter of a great, upward rock. It curled up with its back to Dean, its great wings coming to rest over its body, gathering in some warmth.

Dean watched it for a moment or two, blinking.

He should go home, to his father. He would be missed. Sam and Jess would wonder where he was.

And yet –

Dean was the one who had caused this, somehow. He didn’t understand it and he didn’t know how to fix it, but the least he could do was stay. There was something absolutely wrong about the idea of leaving, and abandoning this strange naked creature to the cold and unfamiliar dark.

Dean didn’t want to get too close to it and make it angry, but he couldn’t sleep on jagged stone. He pulled himself across the rocks, more agile now that the star’s gaze wasn’t on him and making him clumsy. The little sandbar was wide enough that Dean could lie on it with only the tip of his tail still touching stone, the top of his head resting against the jutting upward rock that provided the shelter from the wind and sea spray. Across from Dean, the star had shifted so that it still had its back to him.

Dean sighed. He began counting the creature’s feathers, eyes growing heavier despite the thumping of his heart. At sixty-seven, he fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean woke up slowly, consciousness drifting over him like a soft, shy wave. He blinked into the unfamiliar touch of morning sunlight, sand caked over his eyes; he brushed it away and sat up, disoriented by the feel of bitter salt air in his lungs on waking. For a moment, he couldn't understand why he wasn't beneath the waves, where he belonged - and then he turned around, to find serious blue eyes watching him intently.

Dean jerked reflexively with the shock.

“What the -” he said sharply. The star had its wings folded tight to its body, trying to save its naked skin from the brisk dawn wind. “You - were you watching me sleeping?”

“Yes,” said the star. Even in daylight, its blue eyes seemed almost to glow. Everything about it, from the depth of its stare to the tips of its wings, was strange and otherwordly. “I've never seen anything sleep up close before.”

“Uh. Um,” Dean said. “Right. Well, now - now you have.” At least the star hadn't attacked him as he slept. If it were murderously angry at him for what he'd done, it would have made use of the fact that he’d been unconscious and defenceless, Dean thought to himself. 

He probably should have been more cautious, falling asleep right next to something - someone, perhaps - who had every right to wish him dead a hundred times over. If Dean had been snatched out of his home on the selfish whim of some strange other creature… he could barely imagine the fear, the anger, the suddenness of loss.

And yet the star hadn’t hurt him. It had only - watched.

If he was honest, that wasn’t as uncomfortable as Dean might have assumed it would be. Perhaps it was because the star was so extraordinary in all other ways; it obviously wasn’t going to comply with merperson etiquette. As alarming as that was, it was also… refreshing. Dean felt himself breathe out a little. It meant that he didn’t have to stand on ceremony, either.

“Now I have,” the star acknowledged, so late to respond that it took Dean a moment to grasp the thread of their slow conversation’s meaning. There was an edge of darkness to the star’s tone that made Dean uncomfortably aware that the star had almost certainly never wanted to see anything from on earth or under wave up so close, at all.

“Look,” Dean said, his tone sawing with sudden awkwardness. His hands felt too big, his tail fins drawing nervous circles over the seaweed. “I'm sorry for… for what I did. I never meant to make you… you know… fall. I just…”

“You called to me,” the star said. Its tone was heavy, unreadable. “On the one night of the year when stars, as you call them, can fall to Earth. Or…” The star gestured at the waves before them. “Fall to sea.”

Dean was silent for a moment, lost for words. 

The Solstice. Last night had been the Spring Solstice.

So, of all the nights he could have made his wish… he'd  _ had  _ to pick the one night when he could actually topple a star down out of the heavens. And only because he'd been feeling a little lonely.

Guilt crushed Dean's chest, heavier than deep water pressure.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I - I don't, um. I didn't summon you for a reason or anything, not - well. Can't you just… fly home?” He gestured faintly to the star's wings. They were dry, now, though they were speckled through with sand and seaweed and salt.

The star blinked slowly, considering him. Dean wondered if he'd offended it. Maybe a star's wings were - holy, or something…

“I cannot go home,” the star said, its tone grainy as the sand beneath them. “I have lost my grace.”

“Lost your…?” Dean asked, frowning. His stomach was starting to growl, but he ignored it.

“My  _ grace _ . The source of my power, my…” The star trailed off, shaking its head. “You wouldn't understand.”

Dean opened his mouth to argue, and then closed it. The star probably knew Dean’s limitations better than he did. And yet - the fact remained that this was entirely Dean’s fault. He felt it like prickling stonefish poison under his skin; he had to try to do  _ something. _

“I can't help if you won't tell me what you need,” he said, as humbly as he could. The star looked at him, solemn as ever.

“The arrogance of the Earthbound,” he observed, to no one in particular. “What makes you think you could help?”

“Uh. Seabound,” Dean corrected, a little sharpness in his voice. He smiled thinly to take the edge off it. “I'm from the sea. And I don't know if I could help.” He cleared his throat, trying to avoid sounding overly pointed, whilst definitely making a point. “Do you know? For certain?”

The star looked at him again, a gaze cooler than a hail of diamonds.

“No,” it admitted, in tones tighter than a crab’s pinch. “I don't know.” It twisted its hands together. They were wound up tight as tangled seaweed, both the star and Dean, too. “I don't know anything. I don't know what to do.”

For the first time, Dean saw a chink of softer emotion behind the star's glass-cool façade. He let his haughtiness fade on a sighed-out breath, a wave swallowed back into the sea.

“Tell me,” he said, as expressionlessly as he could. Years of being kind to unwilling talkers had taught him that right now, the star didn't want someone earnest and eager - it wanted a vessel, a quiet listener, a sense of being heard without being judged.

Well, if the star wanted a vessel - then a vessel Dean would be.

“Tell me who you are,” he repeated. “Tell me what you need.”

“I do not know where to begin,” the star said, soft and awkward, its wings still folded close around its body.

“Well… how about we start with names,” Dean said, his voice coming out calm and low, still a little rough with dryness. All around them, the sea was splashing and ebbing. Gulls screeched to the east, and the wind sang a familiar song. “I’m Dean.”

The star stared at him for a long moment, and then lifted one shoulder.

“I am Castiel,” it said. “I am... an angel. I guard the night sky with my siblings.”

Dean opened his mouth to ask a question, and then closed it again when the star - the  _ angel -  _ pressed on, looking out to sea and not meeting Dean’s eyes. Dean understood. Whenever he spoke about himself, if he ever did, he could never seem to look at the person he was talking to, either.

“Angels wear their grace around their necks,” Castiel said. “In a necklace of pure ice. But last night, when I fell, the necklace shattered. The grace escaped, I was falling too fast, I could not catch it…” It swallowed. “Without it, I cannot go back to Heaven.” It saw Dean’s puzzled expression, and elaborated. “Perhaps - perhaps think of the grace as my key, and without it… the door is locked.”

The angel lapsed into silence, the space filled by the hush and thrust of the waves, and the sound of Dean’s stomach grumbling. It was getting harder and harder to ignore. And the angel - was hunger something that would be a problem for it - him - them…? Dean stuttered over defining Castiel, and bit the inside of his cheek for a moment before speaking.

“So, let me get this straight,” Dean said. “I wish on a star, on exactly the wrong night. An angel falls, and loses… uh… their… his… his? Grace?” Dean paused, and when Castiel didn’t move, he ducked his head. “Sorry, I was just - I was just wondering, I guess. Worrying about the wave and not the whale, my mom would have said. You don’t have to...”

Castiel turned to him, and Dean fell silent.

“I have no gender. Angels are not divided in that way… I am not a he nor a she. I understand it would help you to categorise me. Feel free to refer to me however you like.”

The way the angel said it, bitter and uncaring, made Dean’s heart twist in sympathy. He recognised all too well Castiel’s attempt to be indifferent.  _ Stop caring about the small things, and the big things won’t seem so important, either, right? Except it doesn’t work that way. _

“So… OK,” Dean said aloud. “I’m a he. You can be one, too. Then we’re the same.” 

He winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth; he knew very well that he was no more similar to Castiel than an amberjack was similar to an albatross. Castiel, however, didn’t seem to flinch at Dean’s floundering attempts to be friendly.

“As you like,” he said carelessly. Dean nodded, running the heel of his hand over the scales just below his waist, reassured by the familiar sensation. He cleared his throat.

“So… anyway. You, um. You need to find your grace? Or is it… uh... gone forever?” Dean said, wincing slightly in anticipation of the answer.  _ Please, let the grace be somewhere we could find it… please, don’t let me have ruined his life forever. _

“It’s not destroyed,” Castiel said, and Dean breathed out in relief. Castiel swept his hand out from under his wing, his gesture encompassing the entire ocean before them. “It’s somewhere out there. When it fell, without the necklace or my body to contain it, it will have fused with something else. The grace needs a vessel. And I do not know where or what it could be.”

Dean blinked at him.

“Well, we could search for it,” he said. “What does it look like?”

Castiel looked his way, lips pulled a little tight, almost a smirk. His eyes were narrowed against the gathering wind, their blue depths flattened by bitterness.

“You don’t understand,” Castiel said. “It could look like anything. Whatever it fused with. A rock, a shell, a grain of sand. A droplet of water. I won’t know until I touch it.”

Dean gulped, his gaze flicking between Castiel’s two dry, tired eyes as he finally realised the magnitude of the problem. The grace could be  _ anywhere.  _ It had fallen here, but the waves could have carried it far, far away by now. 

Castiel could search the sea for centuries, and never find the sand or stone or single water drop that was the key back into his home, where he belonged.

“Couldn’t you just… have a word with the people upstairs?” Dean said hopefully, pointing up to the sky and speaking out of the corner of his mouth, as though afraid they’d read his lips. “Tell them you lost it, but you want back in?”

“They would not know me,” Castiel said tonelessly, shrugging away the suggestion. “Without my grace, I am nothing. Less than nothing. Just another hopeless supplicant, one voice among thousands.”

Dean let out a long, slow breath, thinking hard. His lungs were tired of breathing air and his neck hurt from sleeping on land and he was hungry, and he didn’t know how to help, and he felt himself swirling down into the same whirlpool of lost control as Castiel beside him.

“Is that all we are, from up there?” was all he could think of to say. “Just… nothing? Less than nothing? All our troubles… all our -” He broke off abruptly. 

Castiel shifted next to him, his wings ruffling in the breeze.

“I did not intend to belittle you,” he said softly. “But seen from above - your problems do seem…”

“Meaningless,” Dean said hollowly. All the times he’d asked for help, all the times he’d been met with silence… it had been better when he’d thought that the stars couldn’t hear him. It turned out that they  _ could _ hear him - they just didn’t care.

Castiel didn’t say anything.  _ Well, you’re stuck listening to me now,  _ Dean thought, with a little bitterness of his own.  _ No way to pretend like I don’t matter from this close. And - no way for  _ me  _ to pretend  _ you  _ don’t matter either. We’re both stuck together. _

“Hungry?” he said suddenly, briskly. Castiel looked over at him once more, frowning.

“Does hunger feel like… intensity… here?” Castiel said, shifting his wing and pointing to his stomach. Dean couldn’t help smiling at that, at Castiel’s solemn frown, his seriousness.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I’m guessing you don’t know what you like to eat? I’ll just get us whatever I can find.”

“You’ll come back?” Castiel said, when Dean began to move over the rocks towards the sea, his glittering green-red tail shimmering in the morning light. Dean looked back, trying to read Castiel’s expression; he didn’t know if Castiel was surprised, or hopeful, or indifferent.

“I’ll come back,” Dean promised.

Under the waves, breathing freely and easily once more, Dean swam a little way out and then dived for the seabed, searching for something he knew would be there. He didn’t stay away long, his mind full up with thoughts of the angel, a subtle clamour in his chest pushing him to hurry back. He wasn’t only hungry for food, he was hungry for company - for Castiel’s voice, for his presence. He wanted to be in conversation again, to be meeting his eyes again, to be meeting his eyes again, to be meeting his eyes again… the same moment played on repeat, round and round and round. It made Dean’s heart beat harder, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He was not gone for long, but when he surfaced once more, he saw that Castiel hadn’t been idle.

“I’m not familiar with the traditional food of your people,” Castiel said, chewing on something, as Dean clambered back onto their rock, bringing his haul along with him. “But I assume those rags are not for eating.”

Dean scowled at him. He seemed to be eating some kind of land fruit, large and yellow and juicy-looking.

“I brought you these,” Dean said, unfolding the rags and holding up one of the oysters that he’d plucked fresh from the rocky seabed. Castiel squinted at them.

“I will persevere with this fruit,” he said. “I found it in the trees at the edge of the beach back there.” He gestured vaguely towards the shore.

“I told you I’d get us food,” Dean said, trying not to sound too insulted.

“I am perfectly capable of feeding myself.”

Dean huffed, and grabbed the rest of his haul - two limp, soaked rags, one black, the other blueish. He teased them out of their sodden folds, laying them out on the rocks to dry. A pair of soft-looking trousers, and a blue crew-neck top, worn thin by the sea.

“Brought you clothes,” Dean grunted. “Unless you managed to find some of them in the trees, too.”

Castiel met his gaze, as serious as ever.

“You think I should dress?” he said.

“Well… you have a human body,” replied Dean. “They wear clothes.”

“Angel,” Castiel corrected him. “I am not human, even in this...” he eyed his hands distastefully. “... this pared-down form.”

“You shiver,” Dean pointed out, resisting the temptation to take a longer look at Castiel’s ‘pared-down’ body. “You’re going to get cold if you don’t wear something. Doesn’t matter what you are. Besides, it’s weird to…”

“To what?” Castiel asked, when Dean only gestured towards Castiel’s body vaguely. Dean frowned at him. Did Castiel not know that most humans didn’t walk around completely naked? Dean had no idea why they always felt the need to put clothes on their bodies, even on the hottest days - it made them less aerodynamic - but they seemed to think it was bad to be unclothed.

And here was Castiel, apparently with no idea about any of that; the expression on his face was honestly curious, innocent of challenge or irony. Dean chewed his lip for a second, looking into his eyes. If Castiel felt no shame about his body, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Dean wasn’t going to be the one to encourage Castiel to feel embarrassed about his shape. After all, Dean caught himself thinking, quite apart from anything else, it was no kind of shape to feel embarrassed about.

His eyes lingered for a moment on the muscles in Castiel’s bare shoulders, visible over the top of an enfolding wing.

“To… to not mind being cold,” Dean said, blinking himself back to reality. “That’s weird, to not mind being cold. You should mind. So... when they’re dry, put the clothes on while the wind is up, at least.”

Castiel seemed to relent, taking another huge bite of his fruit. Dean picked up an oyster, looked at it speculatively for a second, and then held it out for Castiel to touch.

“Is this your grace?” he asked.

Castiel chewed, staring down at the oyster’s dark, glossy shell. He swallowed, wiped his juicy, sticky hand absently on his wing, and then touched the oyster.

“Well?” Dean said eagerly, when Castiel paused. Their fingers were almost touching, barely an inch apart.

Castiel shook his head.

“For a moment, I thought…” he said, wistfully. “But it’s not in there.”

Dean lowered the oyster. 

A small part of him had truly hoped it would be that easy. After all, it had been a near-impossible accident that had brought Castiel falling down to him, hadn’t it? Had he been stupid to expect a similar coincidence to get the angel back home?

He beat his tail angrily against the rocks where they sat, feeling the slip of seaweed and sharpness of jutting flint under his scales.

“This isn’t fair!” he said loudly. “You shouldn’t be shut out of your home just because of what I did to you. I’m sorry. You know, I - I wouldn’t blame you for hating me.” The words spilled out a little more quickly and nervously than Dean had been expecting, and he shut his mouth sharply to stop himself from saying more. He could sense Castiel working up a response, face turned towards Dean, and he did his best not to blush at the outburst.

He cracked open the oyster shell to give his hands something to do. The fish inside tasted strong and briny and good. Dean reached for another, sensing Castiel’s eyes still on him.

“I... don’t hate you,” Castiel said. Dean snorted, and Castiel insisted. “Truly, I do not. I was angry, but… you did not mean for this to happen. And the clothes, the food… staying with me…” Castiel swallowed. “You’re kind.”

Dean shrugged his shoulders.

“We’re gonna get you home,” he said. “We’re going to find your grace, OK?”

Castiel looked over at Dean.

“If I say OK,” he said, “will that make it come true?”

Dean frowned. Castiel had no idea how wishes worked.

“If we try hard enough,” he said.

Castiel seemed to accept that.

For a while, they sat in silence. Dean’s tail shimmered in the sun; Castiel’s wings ruffled in the breeze.

Dean surprised himself by feeling at peace.


	4. Chapter 4

“Is  _ this  _ your grace?”

Castiel sighed, and looked over at Dean. Morning had drifted into late afternoon, the day riding lazily on the back of Dean's fruitless attempts to find the missing grace.

“Dean,” said Castiel, with obvious forbearance. “It is unlikely that my grace will have fused with a rusty fork.”

“You said it could have fused with anything,” Dean objected. Castiel lifted one shoulder as he touched the fork to humour Dean, and then shook his head.

“It is more likely to have fused with something… with which it felt some connection. A kinship of some kind.”

Dean frowned down at the fork. Under the sea, it had looked greenish-bronze and sparkling; now, above the waves, it looked dull, dripping unattractively with brine. Dean cast a self-conscious glance down at his tail, also green and red, and perhaps also best seen in the water. He looked over at Castiel, who was watching Dean with a strange expression on his face.

“What?” Dean said.

“Nothing,” Castiel replied, a little too quickly. He looked away, his gaze brushing across Dean’s face and shoulders before settling on the ocean. Dean shifted a little, letting his own eyes linger on Castiel - the way the soft blue top rested on his broad shoulders, and the way his short hair curled ever so slightly at the back of his neck. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find it yet,” Dean said, wanting to talk with Castiel more, even though he had nothing specific to say. “Your grace.”

Castiel’s lips quirked upwards in a smile. The afternoon sun was kind to his face, softening the lines of it, pouring pirate-gold light into the tiny creases beside his eyes as he looked down at the pile of things Dean had brought him to touch.

“I never expected it to be found. Not on the first day,” Castiel added quickly, when Dean pulled a face at his pessimism. “Thank you... for continuing to look for it. Where are you finding some of these things?”

He pulled a tangle of beads out of the pile as he spoke, wrapping the cheap jade string around his neck and looking up to Dean for his verdict.

“Very nice,” said Dean. He wanted to reach out and set them straight, but didn’t quite dare. “You know, for us… for merpeople… when we give necklaces, it’s a love gift.”

Castiel went very still, and then looked up at Dean with wide, wide eyes.  _ So solemn _ , thought Dean, his heart thudding.  _ What is he thinking? _

“That one wouldn’t count, though,” Dean said, blinking and looking away.  _ Coward.  _ “Ours are made of scales - our own scales. We pull them out.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Castiel said. Dean shrugged.

“Never done it,” he said. “I guess so.”

The afternoon melted into evening, and Castiel was still stuck on his rock, no closer to getting home. When darkness fell, Dean crawled up to sit beside him empty-handed, muscles aching with the strain of swimming all day with little respite.

“I’ll try somewhere different tomorrow,” he said, chafing his arms to relieve the soreness a little. Dean could sense Castiel’s eyes tracking the movement out of the corner of his eye, and exhaled softly through parted lips.  _ It’s just because you’re something new,  _ he told himself, sternly.  _ That’s all it is. He’d be just as interested in an octopus sitting next to him. _

“I was getting most of this stuff from a wreck that went down a few weeks ago,” Dean said aloud, trying to fill the silence that was starting to crackle. “Not far from here. I got your clothes there, too. I figured your grace might be drawn to… I dunno, since you look kinda human, I guessed it might be attracted to something human, too. I guessed it wouldn’t feel a kinship with something from the ocean.”

He looked over at Castiel, trying to keep his eyes flat, and not betray the double meaning. He’d been too heavy-handed, and he knew it; his mouth had run away with him.

Castiel paused for a long moment before answering, his eyes on Dean, who watched him back.

“I don’t think so,” Castiel said softly. “I did not fall to Earth. I fell to Sea.”

Dean stared at him, aware only of the breath sighing out of his lungs, and the closeness of Castiel’s hand to his own on the sandbar where they were sitting, and the shade of Castiel’s eyes as the night closed in around them.

“You don’t have to stay,” Castiel said, when Dean lay down beside him to sleep, a little later.

Dean was silent. He thought about going home, and could summon nothing but sadness at the idea. It wasn’t only that he didn’t want to leave a stranger alone by the sea - it was that he didn’t want to leave Castiel. It was that  _ he _ didn’t want to be alone, in the sea.

“I’ll stay,” Dean said quietly, settling down next to Castiel, just as they had lain the night before. A thought occurred to him, and he added, “Unless you want me gone.”

“No,” Castiel said, soft but quick. Dean heard him take a breath in, and then release it. “No, Dean. Stay.”

Dean stayed.

***

Dean woke up, and found that he had rolled over during the night, creating a little dip for himself in the sand. When he opened his eyes, it was to see solemn blue staring back at him.

He smiled, and Castiel smiled back.

_ I could get used to this,  _ said a voice inside Dean’s head. Dean agreed with it.

“How come you woke up first both times?” Dean said, pressing the heel of his hand to his eyes to wipe away the grit, and sitting up. His tail was dry, a couple of scales sliding off under his touch when he rubbed at it. He hissed a soft breath through his teeth. He wasn’t built to spend so long out of the water.

“I…” Castiel said, and then stopped. Dean wouldn’t have pressed it, but for the look on his face - the slight reddening of his cheeks.

“Are you blushing?” Dean said, leaning a little closer without meaning to as he grinned. “What is it?”

Castiel looked down, and flicked a glance at Dean through his eyelashes. The way he bit his lip had Dean’s heart squeezing. He tried to brush away the feeling, not take it seriously.  _ Anyone would feel this way. He’s beautiful. _

“I got us food, before you woke up,” Castiel said, handing Dean a large segment of the same fruit he’d been eating the day before. “They’re everywhere, just at the top of the beach behind the rocks.”

“I could’ve got us oysters,” Dean grumbled good-naturedly, but he took the fruit all the same and bit down into the soft juiciness of it. He tried to contain his reaction, but Castiel saw the enjoyment on his face and smiled knowingly.

“It’s good,” Castiel said, only the barest trace of smugness in his voice as he took a large bite himself.

“Shut up,” Dean said, even though his heart was pounding at levelling the jibe towards an  _ angel _ .

At least, Dean hoped that was why his heart was pounding. It was definitely fear. Fear of… angelic repercussions. It had nothing to do with the way that Castiel turned to him, just like Dean had hoped he would, with a victorious little smile on his face that made Dean’s hands feel weak.

If he was honest, Dean could feel himself starting to worry a little. He needed some time to clear his head, a few moments beneath the waves to catch his breath. He’d let the tide of feeling and excitement carry him this far, and now he was beginning to realise that it wasn’t quite the easygoing current he’d been used to riding. He’d had things…  _ people  _ in his life before, but the way he felt when he looked at Castiel… it was something completely new. Something stranger, and stronger, and deeper. Something a bit more like the songs all said it should feel like, when... 

Ah, it hardly mattered. After all, Castiel would be going home soon - as soon as they found his grace - and then there wouldn’t be anything left to worry about. Now, with Castiel here, Dean could look to his right, and… and feel, if he were honest with himself, as though the sun had come to live inside his chest. But after Castiel left, Dean would only be able to look up into the sky and hope that his wandering eyes would rest for a moment on the star that he knew... that was how it had to be. 

Dean could feel the brush of a great sadness passing close to him, swirling its fins through the waters of his future; it was striped bright as a lionfish, with a promise of pain to come.

He cleared his throat. Getting sad about it was pointless, when the chances of them ever finding the grace were minimal, anyway. Dean tried not to feel too selfishly happy about that. Castiel wanted to get home, of course he did, and Dean wanted the best for him. 

Speaking of home, Dean knew he should go back to his own, soon. The thought of it made him suck in a breath and release it, hands clenching into fists. He’d been gone for two nights. Maybe they were looking for him. Maybe they weren’t. Dean wasn’t sure which alternative was better. He found his mind scrabbling for something else to pay attention to, something safer and stronger than his guilt.

Castiel was still a little pink, the colour sweet against the blushed-blue morning sky. He looked gorgeous, somehow both more grounded and more transcendental than Dean had ever seen him. It was enough for Dean to let go of any thoughts besides an acknowledgement of the slow, steady, regular thrum of the waves, and of his heart.

“You’re still embarrassed?” Dean asked Castiel aloud, hearing the warmth in his voice and wondering if Castiel could hear it too. “I only asked why you woke up first.”

Castiel looked over at him, his expression abashed, but still able to hold Dean’s gaze.

“I - I like to watch you,” he said, a little abrupt. “That’s all.” 

Dean left a silence, his mouth working to find words to respond, and it seemed to soften Castiel; the angel turned to look at the sea, his head tilted downwards a little. Dean wanted to press the tips of his fingers to the soft, warm skin under Castiel’s chin, and guide his face up towards the light. He clenched his fists to keep them still. 

“You look… very peaceful,” Castiel added, finally.

Dean waved a hand.

“I get it, I get it,” he said gruffly. “You’ve never seen anything sleep before, so you find it fascinating to stare at me drooling into the sand.”

“You’ve never drooled,” Castiel said, sounding intrigued. “Is that a possibility?”

“You may never know,” Dean said, raising his eyebrows and hiding his smile. “Watching me sleep is a source of endless mystery.”

“It is,” Castiel agreed, with a little too much truth in his voice. He cleared his throat quickly afterwards, and shrugged. “After all, there is nothing better to do at night while I’m trapped here.”

_ Right. Trapped,  _ Dean reminded himself.  _ Time to get to work. _

“I’m going to go looking again,” he said aloud. “For the grace.”

Castiel frowned. “Don’t you have anywhere you need to be?” he asked. “Anyone missing you?”

Dean was silent for a beat, thinking of his father - of Sam, and Jess. He didn’t want to admit it - it felt disloyal to suspect them of feeling this way, and yet… deep down, Dean knew they were probably happy without him; relieved not to have him around the place. They didn’t have to pretend to laugh at his stupid jokes, or put up with his occasional moods... or be kind to him, when all they really wanted to do was be without him. Wasn’t it kinder this way, to take away the burden on them? To stay away, so that they wouldn’t either have to tolerate him, or else ask him to leave - and feel guilty doing it? He was taking the weight off their shoulders. He was doing the right thing. And it wouldn’t last forever. He’d go back some time.

The thoughts flashed through Dean’s head faster than a blink, and then he shook his head.

“No one missing me,” he said, a little heavy-handed with the fake cheer in his voice. “We’re fine. Unless, you know…” he grinned, a little more naturally. “You’d rather look on your own.”

Castiel threw him a sharp glance, and then smiled down at his folded hands.

“No,” he said. “I would rather be with you.”

Dean felt his heart swell, like the great spring tide rising through his chest. He smiled as best he could through the surge of the wave, tasting the salt of feeling on his tongue.

“I’ll come back soon, then,” he promised. “I have a better idea where to look today.”

Dean pulled himself to the edge of the rocks, dry throat aching for the sea. He turned to wave goodbye to Castiel before diving into the water - and saw that Castiel had already turned around, and was picking his way through the rocks towards the shore. Dean stared at his retreating back, broad under the blue top that stretched thin over his shoulders. He felt a roll of misgiving.

Somehow, Castiel was supposed to be watching. Supposed to have his eyes on Dean. The fact that he wasn’t, that he didn’t...

Dean swallowed. He couldn’t deny the way that he was feeling, and he also couldn’t ignore how fast he was falling. Like an anchor down to the seabed, he was sinking without hope of swimming - and every time Castiel smiled, every time he spoke in that beautiful voice, every time he looked at Dean with eyes like the sea and the sky, deeper even, soft lips slightly parted…

Every time, it was an extra ounce of iron on the anchor. And Dean knew that he was in trouble - knew that Castiel had come to sea when he’d been at his weakest, at his most vulnerable to falling desperately in love.

In an instant of revelatory self-understanding, Dean knew suddenly that he  _ wanted  _ to love. He wanted to  _ love _ and not feel selfish or wrong for doing it... and maybe Castiel was only - only a vessel for Dean’s need. Someone about whom he knew so little that he could imagine any personality, any history. Maybe Dean didn’t really feel so very much for him, for Castiel  _ specifically.  _ Maybe Dean would have latched on to anyone who had tumbled out of the skies, in his hour of need. Maybe it was only because Castiel was beautiful, and nothing that Dean felt went beyond the surface.

Dean stared at Castiel’s retreating back, and tried to feel nothing. Tried to think of him as distant, dislikeable. Tried to grip onto the idea that Castiel was not all the things that Dean was coming to believe him to be.

It did not quite work. 

He dived into the sea, just too soon to see Castiel turn around and raise his arm, waving goodbye.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean let the current of the sea sweep him up, for once not fighting the pull of the waves. They were taking him where he wanted to go.

He relaxed his muscles, only flicking his tail through the water every now and then to keep his depth in the water steady as the riptide moved him along. Taking in a deep breath of water, he felt his body ease into being beneath the waves once more. Already, there was a part of him that was missing Castiel - that had thought of several things to ask, and several more to tell, and that also wanted only to sit in silence beside him - but Dean told that part of himself sternly to be quiet for a moment.

“Just need… to think,” he muttered to himself, pressing on through the water. “Just need a second.” The water felt pure; the day felt bright and good. Dean felt a little of his fervour unwinding, a little of his guilt over running from home being relieved. He felt a little less like a whirlpool on the inside.

_ So,  _ he said to himself, falling into his familiar swimming rhythm.  _ So, there’s this angel. You knocked him out of the sky. You’ve known him less than two days. And now suddenly you want to spend all your time with him and talk to him about everything and you’re acting crazy because you don’t want to think about leaving him. You know what that sounds like? _

A second voice, deeper in Dean’s mind, grumbled an affirmative.

_ Sounds like exactly what everyone always said falling in love was supposed to be like. But it’s only been two days - only  _ two days _. I’m crazy. Of course, the first time I actually fall in love, I damn well  _ had  _ to do it head-over-tailfins for someone who could never… never feel the same way. _

Dean’s mind chose this moment to helpfully show him a picture of Castiel blushing, a picture of Castiel smiling, a picture of Castiel watching him with soft, easy blue eyes as he slept -

_ Who could only  _ possibly  _ feel the same way,  _ Dean amended, shaking his head.  _ But... this is crazy. It can’t go anywhere. Look at us, it - it  _ literally  _ can’t go anywhere. He can’t come under the waves. I can’t live for long on the surface, and I definitely can’t fly, or - or go back with him to Heaven… not that he’d want that, what am I even saying? I’m crazy... _

Dean took a deep, calming breath. He was two tides rolling against each other, one fighting to push him onwards, the other rolling him back, back, back, its waves thudding to the steady beat of caution. What he needed, in all this, was rock. Stable ground, unshakeable and steady; something he could know for sure, outside of feeling or hoping or falling.

He wasn’t at all sure how to find that. The thought occurred to him that it might have something to do with learning more about Castiel - more than just  _ is serious, is beautiful, likes fruit, feels familiar enough that I think I might have known him in another life, is just out of reach, can walk to the beach where I can’t follow, smiles at the right moments, frowns at the right moments, looks at me like… like… like he’s just as confused as I am - _

Dean couldn’t help smiling as he swam. He was crazy, and he knew it, but it felt so  _ good.  _ When he got back to Castiel, Dean resolved, he’d ask him some questions. Just small things, so that he could get a better sense of who Castiel was - as a person, not just… a beautiful image, a blue-eyed wonder who’d swept into his life at just the right moment. That would help, Dean knew, help him to understand if what he felt was real; if he was falling for Castiel, or only for a dream of an angel.

He reached the place where he'd been heading, and dove down, down to the seabed. Though he’d swum far, it still wasn't so deep, here; it was a wide plain of duned sand and rocks, and coating the bed itself was a solid layer of  _ things _ . Things of all shapes and sizes, some crafted by the hands of humans, some by merpeople, some too strange to easily discern the nature of their genesis; some sparkling, some beautiful, some perfectly ordinary. Dean had come here often as he grew up in the merpeople’s capital, just a quarter-day's swim away. It had become his refuge, a place of wonder and magic.

Dean swam down towards the tangle of things, thinking hard. He knew only too well that in a world that shifts, that demands loss, things have power; history has power. The power to hurt, and to bind. Creatures who live in the ever-changing sea understand this better than earth-dwellers can, Dean was sure of that. His mother had told him so. 

“You can’t keep everything,” Mary had said, holding him close to her, the first time she’d ever brought him to the dunes. Dean remembered the feeling of her soft light hair fronding over his face. “You have to let some things go. But you don’t have to throw them away and pretend they never mattered, little fish. You can bring them here to go to sleep.”

Dean had barely understood, his young life too full of good things for him to be able to imagine having to set down something because its weight was too great. Now, however, he understood perfectly.

When the merpeople had a  _ thing _ , a thing with a history, a thing that they loved too well to toss aside with empty oyster shells and dead scales - but which brought them too much hurt to keep - they carried it to this place, and let it go. The kindness of the dunes was boundless; it kept memories safe, and also let them fade and soften. The place had no name, or else it, in itself, would one day have had to be cast aside. Nameless things may change and change, and keep no history. So it was with the dunes to which Dean dove now, his hands outstretched as he neared the ocean floor, seeking treasures. 

He had come here for a reason. If a part of Dean left his body, he thought he could only imagine it fleeing and fusing to something with a history, a meaning, not some random shell or grain of sand. And when he had fallen out of the sky, Castiel had been in pain; nowhere in the ocean knew pain like this place. Perhaps the grace would have come here, recognising something familiar in the resonance and melancholic beauty of the sparkling dunes.

Dean began to search, picking things out almost at random. He gathered an armful, not stopping to wonder about who had owned these things before - a mother-of-pearl comb; a shiny mirror; half of a human book, leather cover still intact, pages thick and sodden with water… the previous owners of these things would not mind his touching them. It was important only that the memories were safe, not the mirror or the book or the comb themselves. Dean could no more tarnish those memories than he could reach up and put Castiel back into the sky.

“I brought you some things,” Dean called out when he returned to the rocks, staying in the water so that he wouldn't lose his armful of treasures, his tail working hard to keep him above the surface without being dashed against the rocks. “Castiel?”

Castiel’s head appeared over the edge of the rocks, a smile in his eyes, though his chapped lips were a gently-downturned line. Dean beamed up at him, and proffered his haul. A wave slapped into his back, almost sending him spinning; Castiel reached down reflexively to help, but Dean steadied himself alone. The ocean was calm today, no big uncontrollable rollers, but it was hard to stay balanced at the surface even when only being struck by small wavelets.

“Hold on,” Dean said, and flipped his tail, ducking back under the waves. The seabed, just a few feet away, was craggy with rock; Dean nestled his finds into a hole, after checking it first for crabs, and then carried only the mirror back to the surface.

“One at a time is easier,” he said, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he passed it up to Castiel, and then running a hand through his hair so that it wasn’t smooth to his forehead. Castiel touched a dry finger to the mirror’s surface, and then shook his head.

“No,” he said regretfully, passing it back. Dean took it, biting his lip, and then letting it go when another wave hit him and he almost drew blood. He remembered his resolution to get to know Castiel better. It would be awkward to start, but...

“Do - do you like… uh… mirrors?” Dean said. He winced at the awkwardness of the question, but Castiel, above, didn’t seem to notice. He only eyed the mirror in Dean’s hand thoughtfully.

“We do not have them in Heaven,” he said. “We are all… we all look so similar. We are intended to be the same, a united army, undivided. We should be mirrors of each other. But down here, I am different.” He took the mirror back from Dean, who braced his arms against the rock to stop himself being swept into it, giving his beating tail a moment to relax. “I am… unique. It is a strange feeling.” He blinked into the mirror, inspecting the angles of his face. “Not entirely a good one.”

Dean tried to imagine being exactly the same as everyone around him, identical and indecipherable from his neighbour. An image sprang into his mind - of himself, at the party from which he’d fled on the night when he’d made his wish and accidentally summoned Castiel. Of course, not everyone had looked the same, but under their skin they’d all had the same confidence, the same security, the same comfort in themselves. And then there had been Dean.

“I don’t really get being the same as everyone else,” Dean said. “But I might get what it’s like to be different, and - and not really like it.” He could feel salt drying on the inside of his mouth as he talked, and dipped below the waves to take a refreshing mouthful of water - and then remembered the rest of the treasures, and dived down to pick up another, the book. When he surfaced, Castiel was frowning, a shard of curiosity in his eyes. He touched the comb without really looking at it, his eyes on Dean.

“Is it usual for your kind to do that?” he said. When Dean looked confused and opened his mouth to ask what Castiel meant, the angel quickly went on. “To seek to… understand, and relate?”

Dean shut his mouth tight, embarrassment eeling through his veins. He shrugged as best he could.

“I did not mean to anger you,” Castiel said, looking down at him, his eyes flicking over Dean’s face. Dean blinked and tried to shape words.

“It’s just embarrassing,” he said. Castiel’s eyes squinted at the word, not understanding. Dean remembered him sitting naked, questioning why he should clothe himself.  _ He doesn’t always understand shame,  _ he reminded himself.  _ He doesn’t always understand embarrassment _ . “It’s... nothing. I just - yeah, it’s normal for me to do that. To try to understand you, and, uh, relate to you. When you want to get to know someone, you usually try to find the things you have in common. Or try to know how they feel.”

“Why?” Castiel asked frankly. Dean shrugged his shoulders awkwardly.

“To feel closer, I guess.”

“It’s good to be close?”

The moment hung in the air for a long second. A wave swept over Dean’s back, pushing him nearer to the rock, to Castiel. Did Dean imagine the way that the angel leant over a little further?

“Sometimes,” Dean managed to say, his drying throat cracking a little. “Sometimes you feel like you want to be close to someone. So you try to figure out how.”

Castiel nodded slowly.

“In Heaven, we do not…” he began, and then looked down at Dean for a long, long moment, and shook his head. “I think... I understand.”

Dean nodded too, mirroring Castiel.

“I have more things…” he said, gesturing down to the seabed. “I’ll get them.”

The book did not contain Castiel’s grace. Nor indeed did a hairpin, a broken shell, a picture frame, a bowl, a ring in a box, or a loose piece of material that might once have been a curtain or part of a billowing skirt. Dean offered the things up to Castiel in silence, and he rejected them without speech. Dean wasn’t too deep in thought to speak; rather, he was too present, too full up with the moment to figure out words to say. Castiel was crouched on the rock, his eyes faraway. Dean had no idea why he wasn’t talking.

“That’s all I got,” Dean said, as Castiel shook his head and handed back a china bird patterned with blue and green. “I’ll go and find more.”

“Dean,” Castiel said suddenly, before Dean could dive away. “Dean. Do you have a favourite colour?”

Dean frowned up at him, and then nodded.

“Sure,” he said. Castiel’s eyebrows rose and he smiled ever so slightly, as though Dean had confirmed something that he’d suspected but hadn’t known for sure.

“Before I fell, I lacked… the knowledge of preference,” he said. “I did not understand the layering of one thing over another. But now, I think - I also have a favourite colour.” He looked down at Dean, his expression a little shy and guarded, a little hopeful. “We have that in common.”

Dean fought back against the smile, the wave of happiness that rose to subsume him. He cleared his throat.

“What, uh. What colour is it?” he asked.

“Green,” Castiel said. “And yours?”

Dean’s breath caught in his throat.

“Blue,” he managed to say. “It’s blue.”


	6. Chapter 6

The day passed by in vignettes and snapshots, coloured rose even in the present by Dean’s happiness. Every time he came back with more things for Castiel, there were new questions, new answers, new ways to find themselves liking each other a little more than they did before.

“What’s your favourite face to make?” Castiel asked, looking into the mirror. Dean thought for a second, and then crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. He heard Castiel laugh for the first time, taken by surprise. “Beautiful, Dean.”

“What’s your favourite time of day?” Dean asked later, looking up at the sky at midday. Castiel lifted one shoulder. “Mine is the morning, when everything’s still new.”

“I have a favourite time of night, I think,” Castiel offered. “Right before the dawn, when everything is about to start over again.”

Later still, after they’d eaten together, Castiel turned to Dean and said,

“Do you tell lies?”

Dean paused, still chewing on the last of the fish he’d eaten.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “When - when I really want something, and telling the truth won’t work. Then I - I lie sometimes. Or if someone’s worried, I might lie and tell them that everything is going to be OK.”

Castiel nodded thoughtfully.

“Do you?” Dean asked. Castiel shook his head.

“It wasn’t possible, before. Or at least - I never thought of doing so.”

“And - and now?” Dean said. “Do you think you could?”

Castiel waited a long time before answering.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think - if it was very important, then yes. But only for the right reasons.”

“Well,” Dean said, “at least right now, there’s only me here. And you don’t have to lie to me.” Castiel didn’t look at him, and Dean frowned. “You hear? I don’t want you to lie to me. It ruins things. Trust me.”

Castiel looked over at him then, deep into his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, after a long pause. “I trust you.”

And very much later, when Dean had hauled himself up out of the water, muscles aching, to rest after another day of endless swimming, he couldn’t help himself any longer. With the dusk darkening to night around him, he turned to Castiel and asked,

“Castiel, can you - can you feel normal things?”

Castiel gave him the long, slow look that Dean had learned meant that he’d said something either wrong or incomprehensible, or both. He swallowed hard.

“No, I mean - it’s just - I’ve noticed, uh. Like, most of the time you don’t seem to get embarrassed, but this morning you blushed. And you don’t smile all that much, but you laughed today. And I guess - I was just wondering if angels feel embarrassed or happy or… or anything, or if you have a whole other… a whole other range of emotions, or - something. I don’t know, I just…” He tailed off, pretending to lose his thread as he lost his confidence. “I don’t know.”

Castiel tilted his head to one side pensively, and Dean felt his heart give a little extra beat of feeling. And that was what he really wanted to know, Dean supposed. Whether Castiel, too, could feel his heart thud and his blood sing and his fingers tingle with emotion.

“I feel,” Castiel said softly. “It’s new. It’s all so new. When I had my grace… it elevates, it makes me angelic - and now it is gone, I can feel things. I feel… yes, embarrassment, happiness.” He turned his head away, and spoke the next words to the horizon. “Conflict. But I am still learning what each sensation means.” He lifted his hands, and gazed at the fingertips. “I feel them in the same places, but differently. It’s very overwhelming.”

Dean watched him for a few moments, smiling to himself.

“I think it’s better than feeling nothing,” he said, stretching out the muscles in his tail. He was going to be hurting tomorrow.

“You think so?” Castiel frowned at him. “You truly prefer to feel? But there’s so much… so much of it. I miss things, I get angry, I - it isn’t all good...”

“Sure, it’s bad sometimes,” Dean said, nodding. “But man, you have no idea how long I’ve just been… the same. I mean, before - before you came. Everyone else was changing, finding new people,  _ becoming  _ new people, and I was just… me. Same old Dean. Difficult, annoying, hard to handle… same old, same old, round and round and I just wanted something to  _ happen  _ to me, something that’d make me feel different. And then - and then you came down from the sky. And suddenly everything’s new.” Dean blinked over at Castiel, wondering how much he had the courage to say; how much Castiel would want to hear. “Castiel…”

“Dean,” Castiel said, a little more sharply than usual, the inflection barely a whisper of difference - but it was a caution, a wall thrown up, and Dean felt himself careen into it with full force. He tilted his head back, looking down and away, locking his jaw tight.

“I thought - I thought that maybe…” Dean said, his voice a whisper, barely heard above the sound of the waves. He couldn’t look at Castiel.

“I have to go back, Dean,” the angel said, equally soft. “I can’t - even though I - when I have my grace back, everything will change. Don’t you see?”

Dean wanted to curl up and never speak again. He only nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said.

Dean, numbed, could only shake his head.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he managed to grind out. “For bringing you here. For - for… you know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. For a while, there was silence. Dean’s heart ached worse than his muscles. He wished he could love as well as he could swim.

“Do you know why it was me that answered your call?” Castiel asked suddenly. Dean jerked his head up, and shook it slowly when he met Castiel’s gaze. Castiel nodded. “I thought not.”

He fell silent, waiting for Dean to come to him, press him for more. Dean knew what he was doing, and liked and disliked it in equal measure.

“Why, then,” he said, trying not to sound too bitter, too hurt. Castiel flicked him a glance, which Dean did not return.

“In Heaven,” Castiel said slowly, “we do not pay a great deal of attention to the goings-on of Earth. Or sea,” he added, seeing Dean open his mouth. “But we were supposed to. We were made to guard. We have forgotten our purpose in many ways, I think…” He tailed off for a moment, lost in thought. Dean allowed him the silence without interruption, and he came back after a while with good grace. “Angels were created without a sense of good or bad, Dean. We exist knowing only the mission that we were created to perform. There are angels for all things - sadness, lost things, grief, anger, retribution.”

Dean nodded along, pushing around the empty oyster shells from his earlier dinner to give his hands something to do. He held one out to Castiel, who brushed his fingers against it absently and then shook his head.

“I, like all the others, was created with a purpose. I am the angel of solitude, and tears.” Castiel turned to Dean, his gaze more forceful now than perhaps it had ever been. Dean grimaced and looked down. “Something about your call that night brought me to you. You said you were tired of being the same, but it must have been more than that to call me, specifically, to you. Were you… lonely?”

Dean began stacking up empty oyster shells, one on top of the other. After a moment, he shrugged.

“You called me for a reason,” Castiel pressed, his voice gentle, angelic. “What was it?”

Dean shrugged again. His neat tower of shells grew taller.

“Dean?” Castiel said.

Dean pushed aside the shells angrily, toppling them over with a dry rattle.

“What do you want me to say?” Dean said loudly. “That I was sitting here that night and I was - yeah, I was lonely? That I was - I was crying because my mother’s dead and my dad’s always angry and my brother’s married now and I’m just -” Dean broke off, exhaling hard. “Whatever,” he said roughly. “I - didn’t mean to say that. Just leave it alone.”

He sounded like a petulant child.

“You sound like you have been carrying a weight for a long time,” said Castiel. He wasn’t looking at Dean anymore, for which Dean was grateful.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” was all Dean could mutter again, ashamed of himself.

“Pain makes fools of us all,” Castiel said. “Angel and merman, both.”

They sat together, and watched the waves. Dean wondered what Castiel’s pain was.

The wind blew gently. Dean did not ask. He could not bear to speak again.

They fell asleep not long later, back to back.

***

“Dean.  _ Dean.  _ Wake up!”

Dean blinked awake, pulled to the surface of consciousness by Castiel’s urgent voice; he’d been only a few feet under anyway, kept rolling in the waves of uncomfortable dreams by the ache in his chest.

“What’s happening?” he mumbled groggily as he sat up, pulling his tail up instinctively and moaning at the ache in his muscles. Castiel was sitting a few feet away, peering avidly out to sea. It was still night, the moon high in the sky, but its ghostly light was bright enough to illuminate the scene in licks of silver.

“I heard a noise,” Castiel said. “It wasn’t the waves, it was something else. A cry. Very low, very deep. It must have been big. Is it dangerous?”

Dean frowned, opening his mouth to speak just as Castiel held up his hand for silence. In the stillness, Dean heard the far-off keen of a lone whale, long and low and melancholic, and beautiful. Castiel listened to it, his body taut, fingers tapping the ground, wings spread to make himself look bigger. Dean smiled.

“It’s a whale,” he said, still a little hoarse with sleep. “Just a whale.”

“A whale?” Castiel said, staring out to sea. “Is it…”

“It’s alone,” Dean said. “It’s just travelling. It’s calling out for other whales, so that it can find company. It’s not dangerous. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Castiel was still for another long, long moment, and then sat back on the rocks.

“Afraid,” he said quietly. “Yes. I was afraid.”

Dean watched him, trying to pick out features in the darkness, but all he could see was the faint outline of Castiel’s face, the shape of his shoulders and wings.

“It is strange to be scared,” Castiel said. “I have always been the most powerful, but without my grace, I am - I am vulnerable.”

“It’s OK to be scared,” Dean said, still sleepy. Castiel lifted a shoulder.

“I did not realise I could even feel fear, until I heard the whale. It must have been so much bigger than me, and I… I was afraid. I felt I might die. But I didn’t, and now… now I know I might die, I know what it is like to be afraid of it.”

“Castiel,” Dean said, “it’s late…”

“How can you rest?” Castiel said, turning to Dean suddenly, the angle of his head changing. “How can you close your eyes for even one moment? The whole of this,” Castiel swept his hand out, encompassing the stretch of the dark, moving waters, and the endless scope of the star-filled sky, “The whole of it could be taken away from you at any second. It’s - it’s ours for the seeing, for the understanding, for the - for the feeling…”

He tailed away again, and this time Dean was silent, waiting for more.

“It’s beautiful,” Castiel said, his voice soft. “Being alive. Isn’t it?”

Dean swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”

“And I thought my grace made me better, stronger… but…” Castiel swallowed. Dean saw that his hands were fists, clenched with emotion. “I feel as though I have been asleep for aeons. I feel as though - as though I am finally awake. I feel as though I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am alive, Dean. And I am afraid, and I am - I feel...”

Dean moved closer, his tightly-wound heart unclenching.

“I feel as though I could die any moment. I feel so weak. I  _ am  _ weak. But I am still alive. All the infinite reaches of the cosmos... and I have the luck and the terror of being the rarest of all things. Alive. And you are too, Dean. We  _ exist.  _ We know we exist. We share that, we…” Castiel turned his head down, and Dean could hear the smile in his voice when he finished, “we have that in common.”

Dean felt his lips tremble, his body shiver.

“We’re alive together. At the same time. What are the chances? That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

Dean licked his lips. He wanted to agree, but his own words came back to him -  _ I don’t want you to lie to me. It ruins things. Trust me. _

“I don’t know if it means something,” he said cautiously. “I think it’s just - that we’re here. Coincidence.”

Castiel moved closer, nodding hard.

“ _ Exactly _ ,” he said. “Coincidence. You, me, the sea, the sky, everyone and everything, all coinciding. All here together. And if we want that to mean something, we can make it mean something. And if we want it to mean nothing, it could mean that, too. All the meaning is inside us. And all the feeling is what gives the meaning. And that’s why we have to feel. So that things mean something.”

Dean blinked heavily, trying to keep up.

“Cas,” he said, the shortening of Castiel’s name falling naturally. “It’s late, and I know you’re having big life revelations, but…”

Castiel paused for a second, and then seemed to unbend.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry to disturb you. Please go back to sleep.”

“You too,” Dean said, settling back down into the sand. “Come on.”

When Castiel didn’t move, Dean sat up again.

“Hey,” he said. The moon was so gentle over Castiel’s shoulders, his arms, his hair. Dean squeezed his eyes shut, remembering their conversation earlier.  _ I’m sorry, Dean.  _ Never going to happen. “Sleep. You can keep uncovering the secrets of the universe tomorrow. It will still be here, I swear.”

“You sleep,” Castiel said. There was a strange weight to his voice that had Dean frowning, watching Castiel with squinting eyes.

“Why don't we both sleep,” he said, with a little more force. Castiel flicked his head sideways as though to snap, but said nothing - apparently thinking better of it. After several long beats of silence, he sighed.

“I have not slept. Not since I fell,” he said heavily.

“You don't sleep?” Dean said, his suspicion confirmed; if he was honest with himself, he'd guessed that Castiel might not sleep some time ago, but hadn't wanted to challenge him and change the steady sleeping arrangement that he liked.

“I try,” Castiel said. “I am tired. But I do not know how.”

“Cas,” Dean said, trying his hardest to keep the warmth out of his voice. “Why didn't you ask me for help?”

Castiel didn't speak immediately, considering his answer.

“I didn't want to tell you,” he admitted hesitantly. “I thought that if you knew I do not sleep, you would not stay here over the night anymore.”

Dean scoffed.

“Cas, I would have stayed if you wanted,” he said, shaking his head. “You gotta know that I would.”

“I didn't want to be too different to you,” Castiel said in a rush, this confession coming from deeper than the first. “I didn't want to be strange, I wanted - I just wanted to be close to you.”

Dean pulled in a sharp breath, struck momentarily silent by surprise. He sought for words, glad that Castiel could not see his expression.

“Cas, you - you can’t say that - you can’t say things like that, not if you don’t - please, I know it’s stupid, but it just - it - when you don’t…”

He broke off, his throat thick. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a small voice still wondering calmly and dryly at how much this  _ mattered  _ to him, but it was submerged beneath the tide of hurt and hope and want.

“Dean, I’m only afraid,” Castiel whispered. “I’m afraid of hurting you. I’m afraid of being hurt. I’m afraid…”

Dean’s heart was pounding. Did this mean…? He hardly dared to hope that it meant Castiel shared any of his feelings.

“Cas… you…?”

“I don't know. Dean, I just - it's all so fast, and I don't know. I'm afraid.”

Dean wanted to take his hand, to kiss his fingertips, the inside of his wrist - but it would have been too much, far too much. Cas was scared, and that wouldn’t be helped by Dean pushing too far now.

“I know,” he said. “I know. It's crazy. But we've got time, right? Time to figure this out.”

“Until my grace is found,” Castiel said, his tone indecipherable.

“Yeah. ‘Til then,” Dean said, his own voice sharpened by the resurgence of hurt when he'd been riding a wave of happiness. 

“It could happen tomorrow,” Castiel said. Dean didn't know if he sound more full of hope or full of dread.

“It could,” Dean conceded. His body was begging him for sleep. “But in the meantime, we can - we can just be us. Right?”

“Right,” Castiel agreed, just a shade too quickly for his cool tone to be entirely believable. Dean’s tired eyes softened.

“Lie down. Come on,” he said, and Castiel sat still for a moment before acquiescing. “You eat, you breathe… I figure a little sleep couldn’t hurt. So close your eyes.”

There was silence from the figure lying opposite Dean.

“Are they closed?”

“Yes. They’re closed.”

Dean let his own eyes fall shut. He evened out his breathing.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Cas?”

“It’s not working.”

Dean sighed.

“Then think about something good until you feel yourself drifting off.”

Castiel shifted a little in the dark, and then went still.

“Dean?”

“... yeah, Cas.”

“I’m thinking about you.”

Dean grinned, pressing his face into the sand.

“I’m thinking about you, too.”

They fell asleep - both of them this time, truly - facing each other.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean woke up to Castiel’s eyes, exactly as he'd expected. His smile had been ready at the corners of his mouth on waking.

“You were supposed to be sleeping,” Dean said, without heat. Castiel, still lying down, blinked away the soft rebuke.

“I did sleep,” he said. “I feel better. All the weight is gone from my body, and my eyes do not itch.”

Dean blinked. Castiel did look, if it were possible, even more beautiful this morning. The lines under his eyes were not so starkly pronounced, and his skin was a warmer, healthier tone.

“Mmmmm,” said Dean. “That'll be because you're not so sleep-deprived.”

“I will help you look today,” Castiel said, as Dean sat up. “For the first time since I fell, I don't feel like I'll fall over if I walk too far.” He reached absently over to the mound of treasures that Dean had brought him over the past days, which they'd gathered onto a rock together for Dean to take back at some point.

_ When Castiel is gone,  _ the voice in Dean’s head said helpfully. Dean frowned and did his best to ignore it. 

“Do you really have to walk everywhere?” Dean asked. He gestured to Castiel’s wings, salt-encrusted and ruffled by the wind, still. Castiel hadn't been taking care of them. “Those just for decoration?”

Castiel dropped the jade necklace he'd been rolling in his fingers, his expression forbidding.

“For decoration?” he demanded, For the first time in a while Dean heard that same angelic anger that Castiel had shown the night that he'd fallen, sudden and unexpected. Dean pulled back instinctively, and Castiel stood up with the swiftness and agility of a shark, a spark in his eyes. “Let me show you decoration,” he growled. He shook out his wings; feathers fell into place, and sand sprinkled to the rocks with a hiss. 

Castiel smiled, eyes hard and challenging. “Catch me if you can.”

He bent his legs, leapt - swept down his mighty wings - and his leap lasted, and lasted… he twirled away into the sky, impossibly light and agile, with strength in his wings that Dean could only dream of. A shiver flittered over his skin.

“You're going to get left behind!” Castiel called, swooping over his head. Dean snapped his mouth shut.

“You mean we're not even gonna get any breakfast?” he yelled back. When Castiel didn't answer, looping high in the sky, Dean shook his head and laughed. He pulled himself to the edge of the rock, feeling his scales chafing on the jagged stone - and then dived in.

With a flick of his tail he was on the move, pushing through the water in the direction that Castiel had flown. The waters today were sparkling and clear, the sky a heavy blue above. Dean dived deeper, enjoying the feel of the water through his hands, his hair, cleaning the dry scales on his tail and behind his ears. He felt light, happy, free, caught up in the moment - full enough of joy to laugh into the water, sending bubbles spiralling to the surface. He followed them up, wanting to find Castiel and chase him down.

Near the surface, the water was a light turquoise. Dean broke the clear, glassy ceiling, sending water spraying. There was no sign of Castiel; Dean swung his head left and right, water droplets skimming down his cheeks.

_ WHOOSH. _

“Is that tail just for decoration?” Castiel called down to Dean, as he swooped overhead and went gliding over the water, wind rippling the feathers of his wings. Dean didn’t hesitate; with a whoop of excitement, he slipped back into the water, his fins flashing furiously as he flew through the water after Castiel. He flipped his body, swimming with his face to the surface so that he could spot Castiel through the distorted window of water. At first he thought that he was too slow, that he was never going to catch up to Castiel - but then he caught sight of a pair of feet, and then legs in dark old sailor’s trousers, and a blue top with wings outstretched on either side…

Dean pushed himself harder, swimming faster, breathing hard with the effort, water moving cleanly through the delicate gills at the side of his neck. Above him, Castiel’s face came into view, looking straight down into the water at Dean. He was smiling, his hair pushed back by the wind, the muscles in his shoulders working as his wings beat against the air. 

Dean lifted a hand, ruining his fluid motion through the water and slowing himself down; Castiel dropped his speed, too, to keep close to Dean. He reached down a hand, trailing his fingers in the water; Dean could see the white line of bubbles that his touch left across the surface. He stretched his own hand out further, reaching for Castiel…

Who pulled up, and away, higher into the sky. Dean let out a gasp of breath and pulled his hand back down as Castiel whirled and dived back in close, slowing down sharply. Dean copied him, letting his face relax into a smile as he broke the surface.

“A gust of wind,” Castiel said ruefully, his wings still beating to keep himself aloft. Dean shook his head, dismissing the implied apology without rancour.

“That was good,” he said instead, beaming. He could still see Castiel’s face above his own in his mind’s eye, flying close above just as he swam fast below. He blinked, against the sunlight in his eyes, wanting to etch the memory into his mind forever.

“It was good,” Castiel agreed. For a moment they just smiled at each other, until another burst of sudden wind blew Castiel off course. Dean looked up, but the sky was still clear blue: not a cloud to be seen. Still, they would come, Dean thought. The clouds would come back. It couldn’t be sunny forever.

“We’d better get on,” Dean said, a little heavily. Castiel raised his hands, fluttering them through the air.

“I do not know where to begin looking,” he said. “I will try along the shore.”

Dean nodded.

“I’ll go back to the dunes,” he said. “I know it might seem pointless after yesterday, ‘cause we didn’t find anything, but…”

“No,” Castiel interrupted him with a small smile. “It is a good place to look. I wish I could see it.”

Dean thought of the dunes, rolling as far as the eye could see. So many buried treasures, hidden from sight.

“It’s just... loss,” he said. “It’s not that great. There are better things to see.”

Castiel, hovering above, considered for a moment with angelic solemnity.

“If I could go with you,” he said eventually, “I would be happy.”

Dean blushed to the tips of his ears, and swirled his tailfins in the water in awkward happiness. He opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it, and then tried again.

“Yeah,” he said, a little thickly. “Yeah. I think I would be, too.”

***

Deep underwater, back at the dunes, Dean gathered treasures. He tried to pick more carefully this time, choosing things that reminded him specifically of Castiel. It wasn’t difficult, since most things made him think of Castiel, anyway. His mind was a constant and tireless spring of memories, hopes, imaginations.  _ I’m thinking about you. If I could go with you, I would be happy. I just wanted to be close to you. _

Dean was so full of love that he could almost feel it spilling out of him. He took a moment to raise his hands to his face, knuckling his eyes and grinning. Castiel was falling for him, too. It was there in the words that he said, in the look in his eyes, in the lines of his body and the language they spoke: a silent welcome, a wordless desire. Dean wondered what it would be like to run his hands over Castiel’s skin, to push them through his hair, and to say goodbye with a kiss instead of a word. He wanted to know, he wanted, he  _ wanted… _

But he couldn’t move too fast. Everything was still fragile, young, hopeful. And yet - he couldn’t just do nothing, he simply couldn’t - there was just too much love in him to contain. He felt he had to do something, anything…

His eyes alighted on a string of metal loops, golden. He blinked down at it, and an idea came to him. Would it be too much, he wondered? Surely not, since Castiel wasn’t completely aware of what it would mean…

Dean settled himself at the bottom of the sea, and began to work.

**

Although they spent most of the afternoon apart, Dean busy and Castiel searching along the shore for his grace, they still came back together in the evening. Dean had brought a huge armful of things back from the dunes, through which Castiel moved slowly, touching each one to make sure it did not contain his grace.

“You know,” said Dean, lying on his back on the sandbar, his tail flicked up into the air as he gazed upwards at the darkening sky. “If you’d told me before all this that I was going to meet a star - and he was going to be you - I would have told them they were crazy.”

Castiel let out a soft breath that, without looking at him, Dean knew was a little laugh.

“If someone had told me, before all this, that I was going to fall for the wish of a merman - and that then I was going to - to not despise that merman completely, I would have told them they were crazy, too.”

Dean was silent for a little while, before rolling upright.

“I know it’s selfish,” he said. “And you know how sorry I am for making you fall. I’m doing all I can to get you back up to Heaven, but… Cas, I - I’m glad I met you.”

Castiel stared at him, and Dean was struggling to make sense of his expression until he spoke.

“As strange as it may seem,” he said, his voice low and throaty, “I am glad I met you too, Dean. I am glad that I fell. I am glad I got to experience this… feel all these things. I am glad of it.”

Dean grinned at him, his heart pounding in his chest. He wrapped his arms around his curled-up tail, and leaned forwards as Castiel picked up a ring with a huge, glowing pearl set in silver.

“If I had to pick something to put your grace in,” he said, “I’d pick something like that.”

“You would?” Castiel held the ring between his fingers, frowning at it thoughtfully. “Why?”

“Because,” Dean said. “I don’t know, it’s… it’s beautiful. And your grace… well, it’s yours. So it must be beautiful too.”

Castiel looked at him, his eyes full of something that Dean didn’t understand. He raised his hands and pushed at the air dismissively, reddening.

“Ah,” he said. “Ignore me. I’m no good at - at saying good things to people. It just comes out sounding stupid.”

Castiel made a quick movement, and for a moment Dean thought that Castiel was going to reach over and take his hand - but then he only put the ring down on the sand, separately from the rest of the old treasures.

“It’s not stupid,” he said. “It’s - I - it…” He paused, to gather his thoughts. “It’s not stupid to say how you feel. It’s special. At least, it feels special to me. Is it special to you?”

Dean didn’t have to think before nodding.

“Most times, I don’t tell anyone what I really think,” he said. “How I feel. It’s different to say the truth like that.”

Castiel’s lips quirked upwards.

“Then thank you,” he said, looking up and meeting Dean’s eyes. “For making an exception.”

Dean smiled at him, and let out a sigh. Castiel was the exception to a lot of things that Dean had taken for granted.  _ I’m not the kind of person who falls in love quickly. I’m not the kind of person who talks about feelings. I’m not the kind of person who stares dreamily up at the sky and thinks about the angel sitting next to him. I’m not the kind of person who wishes on stars... _

“Hey, Cas - that stuff that you were saying last night. About the universe, and being alive… can you say it all again?”

Castiel smiled, and came to lay down next to Dean. They watched each other: the rise and fall of their bodies with the breaths sighing in and out, like waves; the minute movements of their faces; the flick and flick-back of their eyes.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“Coincidence,” he said. “You, me, and the sea, and the sky, all coinciding…”


	8. Chapter 8

Dean woke up. Castiel’s eyes were on his, serious and a shade darker than usual.

He sat up, feeling a cooler wind on his back. The sky above was different today; clouds, grey and rolled thick as waves, were hanging overhead. Dean grimaced at them, and then looked back down at Castiel.

“Did you sleep?” he said softly. Castiel nodded, still lying down. He had sand on his arms, though his feathers were cleaner after the flight of the day before. He looked - he looked settled, he looked a part of his surroundings… he was still beautiful in an otherwordly way, but the strange sheen was gone from his skin, and he smelled of sea and wet sand and sun. He looked like a beach creature, a sea bird. He looked like he belonged.

“Cas…” Dean said. “Do you - when we find your grace. Do you really have to go?”

Castiel went very still, and then in one smooth movement he sat up, face turned away from Dean. He was quick as water, impossible to hold for long.

“There are people waiting for me,” Castiel said. “It’s - it’s my  _ home. _ My - my siblings…”

Dean thought of Sam, and missed him with a sudden, powerful sadness. No one from the Court of the merpeople had come looking for him, so Dean could only guess that they were too busy being relieved that he was gone. He didn’t blame them, but - about Sam, above anyone else - it hurt to be right.

“I get it,” Dean managed to say. The grey day felt as though it were siphoning down from the clouds to sit low in his stomach. “You miss them. You belong up there.”

Castiel said nothing. Dean felt angry at him, angry at himself, angry at the both of them, angry at the universe for bringing two people together who had no business even being aware of the other’s existence. They could not survive; they absolutely,  _ obviously  _ could not survive. And yet - and  _ yet… _

It was that  _ and yet  _ that hurt the most. The hope that despite the odds, despite Castiel being bird and Dean being fish, they could find a way to meet in the middle. But that was the problem, Dean thought. There  _ was  _ no middle, no layer between sea and sky where they could both be safe and happy for long. Neither could survive in the world of the other. They were doomed, utterly doomed.

Dean sniffed the air. Those clouds, and yesterday’s wind… there was a storm coming, a big one. If he’d been paying attention the day before, he would have known it was coming.

“I’m going to get back down to the seabed,” Dean said hollowly. “See what I can find.”

Castiel sat up, as Dean began to move away.

“Don’t you want to eat something? I still have fruit…”

“I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself,” Dean found himself snapping, only recognising the taste of Castiel’s words in his mouth after he’d spoken them. He looked back at Castiel, who had his mouth open, looking slightly lost. Dean’s anger didn’t melt, an icy wall, but he hated seeing Castiel look hurt.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, Cas. I’m just - this is - it’s a mess, you know?”

Castiel’s face softened.

“It’s a mess,” he agreed. Overhead, a low rumble of thunder sounded.

Dean didn’t wait to say goodbye. He dived into the waves, and kept himself busy as he had done the day before.

**

The first Dean knew of the storm’s magnitude was when he’d left the bottom of the ocean and started to make for the surface; he’d been deep enough that the sound of the rain and the rolls of thunder had been stoppered up and silenced by the brine. Rising up once more in search of Castiel, however, Dean found himself staring up at a surface that roiled, white foam coating the bucking rollers, and the steady roar of falling rain loud in his ears.

He broke the surface, and was immediately bowled over by a wave three times taller than himself. He let himself spin through the waves - on another day, this would have been fun, just sport for him - but now, it rose a sick kind of worry in him. He fought against the current, muscles straining, and managed to get his head above water again. The wind was screamingly strong, tearing at his eyes, his ears; the sky was dark with purple glooming clouds. Lightning smashed and sizzled in forks. Dean accidentally choked on his mouthful of water, and coughed his way back beneath the waves.

Castiel. He’d never seen a storm like this before. Would he have known to land, if he’d been flying? Would he have tried to get back to the rock? Would he be stranded somewhere… what if the waves were tall enough to sweep over the rocks where they’d made their little temporary home? What if Castiel was, even now, clinging for his life to a slippery rock, losing his grip one finger at a time, calling for Dean even as he flapped his sodden wings desperately, trying to get airborne? What if he was drowning?

It was crazy to go near the rocks when there was a storm this big, and Dean knew that. He could get his brains dashed out, his neck broken. And yet - the image of Castiel sinking beneath the waves, gasping for breath and taking in water… water which his body could not take…

Dean struck out for the rocks. He swam hard, harder even than he had the day before against Castiel. The swirling waves tried to alter his course, but they stood no chance against his sheer determination.

“Come. On. Come. On,” he gasped, with each pull of his hands through the water. “Come  _ on.  _ You better be OK, you  _ better  _ be OK… please, please let him be OK,  _ please _ …” Dean didn’t know who he was talking to, what he was saying; his heart was thrumming in panic, his blood was cold with fear, and his mind felt icy-sharp and razor-thin with elevated focus.

He was nearing the rocks now. Not far to go. With a surge of effort, he hoisted himself up above the surface once more, and realised with a clutch of horror that he was far closer to the rocks than he’d intended to be - he was almost right on top of them already. He turned around, ready to battle his way back. The waves swirled and battered him, pushing him on. He was powerless. He worked his arms, worked his tail, but to no avail.

“Cas!” he called out, his voice ragged with fear. “Can you hear me? Are you --” He swallowed a lungful of water and spluttered. He was trying to swim away from the rocks, whilst also looking for Castiel, but there was no sign of him. “Castiel!”

A wave rose, an open mouth that swallowed Dean whole, sucked him in and then spat him back out right onto the jagged edge of a rock. His head smashed into the crude stone, and for a moment, all was twinkling lights and surreality - and then he was back, and there was blood on his hand. Blood on his neck, which the rain was washing away. Blood, so much blood, and he was losing his one-handed grip on the snarling rock that had bitten him -

“DEAN!”

The voice was a harsh cry that echoed through the sound of the rain and the wind and the thunder. Dean raised his blood-stained hand, his consciousness fading.

“C-Cas…” he said. He was still just above the waves, just holding on by his fingertips. “Cas… CAS?”

“ **DEAN!** ”

There was a  _ whoosh  _ of colder air behind Dean, and the sensation of arms inside soaked, soft blue sleeves encompassing him, lifting him - and then there was a hand on Dean’s forearm, and the world exploded even as Castiel’s frantic wingbeats lifted them into the sky.

Pain. Pain pain pain pain pain pain  _ pain pain pain.  _ Dean thought that he would die of it. He was  _ burning,  _ burning from the inside out; he was screaming, he had fire under his skin and it was moving, it was circling the place where Castiel’s hand touched his arm. He saw lightning fork down around them as they rose, and rose, and rose into the sky…

“No - no,” Dean heard Castiel calling, his voice loud in Dean’s ear. “Not you! It can’t be - Dean -  _ Dean… _ ”

The pain was a lance of aching white that columned through him in entirety. There was no escape except oblivion.

Rising still into the sky, Dean let himself be overcome by senseless dark, going limp in Castiel’s strong, strong arms.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean woke up, and there was nobody there.

He was surprised to find himself alive. He blinked a couple of times, to make sure that he was.

Rain was still falling, ever so lightly. Around his head, there was a roll of material. Dean reached up, and knew it at once by the softness, the slight crackle of the salt soaked deep into the fabric.

It was Castiel’s blue top, the one that Dean had found him to wear.

Horror was a sickness in Dean’s blood that could not be stopped. He sat upright, and groaned at the way his head pounded.

“You shouldn’t move so fast.”

Dean started at the sound of Castiel’s voice, a burst of emotions across his chest. He blinked muzzily, turning to see Castiel sitting behind him, motionless.

“You’re still here?” was all Dean could think to say. Castiel frowned at him. “What? You found it, didn’t you? You found what you were looking for.”

Castiel said nothing. The silence between them, normally a freedom, was a weight that ached on Dean's shoulders. Castiel looked wound up tight, his face pinched and pale, his hands clasped tight around each other.

Dean swallowed hard. Castiel was saying nothing; he had to push for more. “Your grace. It’s me, isn’t it? It’s inside me.”

Castiel opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it, and simply nodded his head.

“Did you take it back?”

“Not yet.”

Dean nodded. The rain was easing off.

“Thank you,” he said. “For - for saving my life.”

Castiel lifted a shoulder.

“You would have done the same for me.”

For a while, neither of them spoke. It was bland; it was all bland. It was bland and dull. It was so obvious what happened now, Dean thought. Just hours ago, there had been hope - there had been possibility. There had been magic and mystery. And now it was just - obvious.

“Come on,” said Dean. “Let’s get it over with.”

Castiel looked up at him, his eyes hard as flint.

“Dean… I don’t know,” Castiel said wretchedly. Dean felt a sudden spark of hope, but it faded as Castiel went on, “I have to take it back. But - being fused with the grace… it might have changed things. It might have made you feel - closer to me. Do you see?”

"You think it might have had an effect on me?" Dean asked. He hoped that Castiel wasn't trying to say what Dean  _thought_ he was trying to say; he could already feel anger brewing inside him.

"I think it might have - changed your feelings for me. I have never been separated from my grace before, so I don't know the effect on a vessel, but I would imagine there's some kind of emotional run-off."

Dean was silent. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to calm himself. He thought that perhaps he had never been so angry in his life.

“Listen to me. You can take your grace back,” he said, as calmly as he could. “You can go back to Heaven. You can leave me here. But you _will not ever_ try to suggest that the way I - the way I feel about you is _anything_ but _me_. It’s not 'emotional run-off'. This isn't the... scraps and dregs of your own self-involvement, Castiel, you narcissistic bastard. It's _me_  and it's _only_ me _._ I  _know._ Do you understand?”

He was only a merman; his voice did not tremble with angelic wrath. Even so, Castiel shifted, blinked - looked abashed.

“Take it,” said Dean. “Take it, now.”

Castiel reached over, and Dean closed his eyes. With two fingers, the angel touched Dean’s forehead. There was a pain - Dean was expecting it this time, and gritted his teeth so he wouldn’t cry out, only he did, still, a little - and then a loosening in his chest, a cooling. As Castiel moved away, there was a sense of something being gone.

Dean opened his eyes, and looked at Cas. There was a question in his face. Dean listened to his heart for the briefest moment, and then shook his head.

“It’s the same,” he whispered. “Everything is the same. It was all _me._ ” He was going to cry - or perhaps he already was crying, since there was wetness on his cheeks and the rain had stopped, now.

“Dean…” said Castiel. He didn’t seem to know what to say. He pointed finally to Dean’s arm, the one that had burned when they were flying in the sky. “I can heal that.”

Dean looked down at his arm. A handprint, red and livid, was etched into the skin. It hurt to touch.

“I’m keeping it,” Dean said bluntly. “It’s mine.” _You can’t take that away._

Castiel nodded. He reached out all the same, and briefly touched Dean’s cheek. Dean barely leaned into the caress. When it was over, the pain in Dean’s head was gone, but the handprint was still there.

“Thank you,” Dean said. He unwrapped the shirt from around his head. Castiel took it back, the blood on it vanishing under his touch.

Dean’s sadness was too great. He could not keep sitting on the rocks, waiting for Castiel to decide it was time to go. The water was close; Castiel had set him down near to the edge of the stone.

“Well, you got what you wanted,” Dean croaked. “So go. Go home.”

He looked at Castiel one last time, a single glance that would have to last him for the rest of his life.

Then he fell into the water, and swam away.

**

Dean didn’t know where to go, so he went home.

The water was the same, same, same. Every breath the same. Every taste the same. Everything was the same. Dean felt nothing.

He crept into the Court, returning to his house - a coral masterpiece, shaped and fashioned over the years into beautiful spirals and whorls and windows and doors. He did not appreciate the beauty of it, not today. He drifted inside, glad to find no one at home - not his father, not Sam, not Jess.

He swam to his own room. It looked small.

The place where he slept looked narrow, too narrow for two. Dean was glad of that, at least. He huddled there. Hours later, maybe, he fell asleep.

**

“Dean?”

Dean was woken by a voice saying his name. His eyes flew open - for a split second, he thought -

“Dean?” The voice came again. Sam. Dean had never been more glad to hear his brother’s voice. He raised himself up, and found Sam leaning over him, looking worried. “Dean - what’s happening?”

Dean flicked his tail, putting himself at the same height as Sam. A thousand words were caught in his throat.

“Sam - I’m - I’m sorry for being gone, and - I’m sorry for coming back, I know… I know you probably don’t want me here…”

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam said, and pulled his brother into a tight, warm hug. Dean was still for a moment, and then gradually unbent, resting his chin on Sam’s broad shoulder. “What happened? I saw you with that - that bird-man, and I wasn’t sure what to do…”

“You saw me?” Dean said, pulling back, a spike of surprise piercing his grey fog. “You knew I was with Cas?”

Sam looked at him as though he were mad.

“You really think I’m gonna let you go off for days without checking up on you? Dean. You’re my brother. I stayed long enough to see that you were - you know, OK - and then I left you alone. But I had to know that you were OK.”

Dean felt his lips starting to tremble, and pressed his hand hard to his face.

“Thanks - thanks for checking up on me, Sammy,” he said. “I, um. I don’t - I don’t know how to… to explain, I just...”

Sam put a hand on Dean’s shoulder - not the branded one, but the other. That mattered, somehow. Dean swallowed hard.

“Tell me,” said Sam.

And Dean did. It spilled out of him awkwardly: bits and pieces of memory, with broken smiles at how happy he’d been since Castiel fell. When he was done, he felt as though he’d been torn into a thousand pieces - but at least it was outside of him, not caught up inside his head like a fish in a net.

“And then I just - I told him to go,” he finished. “Sam, I - I’m so sorry. For just leaving, for not coming back… it was selfish. I was selfish. I thought I was doing right by you, but it was just self-pity, and me being stupid, and I - I’m sorry.”

“Dean,” Sam said. “You know who makes me selfish sometimes? And crazy?”

Dean shook his head mutely.

“Jess,” Sam said. “I love her - I love her past the point of goodness, Dean. I get it.”

“But I don’t - I don’t do this,” Dean said wretchedly. “I don’t act like this, not after so little time, not when it’s - it’s such a mess...” A memory: Castiel, saying those words. _It’s a mess._ Dean closed his eyes as if to blot it out. It hurt more than he could ever have imagined.

“You didn’t,” Sam said. “No one does, until one day maybe they do. It’s different for everyone.”

“Can - can you forgive me?” Dean said, not meeting Sam's eyes. He would never have said this, before Castiel. He would have acted like nothing had ever happened, and nothing would have shifted him. But Castiel - Castiel had somehow taught him how to say what he felt. “Can I still be… me? Even when I love… I love him?”

Sam looked at him, his eyes full of sadness and love. Dean tried to smile, so that Sam wouldn’t worry too much.

“Of course I can forgive you. And you’ll always be you. Love makes you selfish,” Sam said. “It makes you crazy and selfish and wrong. But it’s okay. Because the people you love, they’re all crazy and selfish and wrong, sometimes, too. For whatever reason, maybe for love, maybe for something else, but… Dean, I’m trying to say - it’s okay. I get it. Really.”

Dean swallowed hard.

"When did you get so wise?" he asked, twisting his face into a grin. Sam smiled back, a little lopsided: the smile that Dean had known since he was tiny. "You remind me of Mom when you say stuff like that."

Sam beamed under his praise, puffing out his chest a little. Dean's face already hurt from smiling; he couldn't feel it, even though he wanted to. Sam saw his expression relax back into nothingness, and spoke again.

“Now, the only thing is, what will you do now?”

Dean lifted a shoulder in response to Sam’s question.

“I didn’t really have any plans,” he said - and then froze.

“Dean?”

“I have to go,” Dean said suddenly, flicking his tail and making a bolt for the door. “I’ll be back, though, I swear. I’ll be back, I just - maybe there’s still time…”

Sam nodded, and smiled with sadness at the corners. Dean needed no further blessing. He fled.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean fled to the dunes. Why did they have to be so far from his home, he wondered? Why was everything against him, why could nothing be easy? He stayed at the dunes long enough only to seize what it was that had been keeping him busy the past two days, and then began swimming once more - back to the rock. Maybe Castiel would have left already - or maybe, just maybe, he would still be in time…

“Castiel!” Dean called, heaving himself out of the water and onto the rocks. The sky was darkening around him. “Castiel, wait!”

The waves heaved and hawed into the silence.

Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.

Dean felt something inside his chest collapse.

Castiel was already gone.

Dean looked down at the treasure that he’d brought from the dunes - not another’s relinquished memory, this time, but something that he’d been making. A necklace, made of his own scales - scales he’d taken from his shining tail, choosing the best and the brightest ones.

He’d pulled them out. It had hurt.

But it had been worth it, just to imagine the look on Castiel’s face when Dean gave it to him. A love gift, a present - a symbol of everything that there was between them.

And now - Dean let out a soft, pained breath into the silence, and then looked up. Somewhere up there - the sky was still too bright for him to see - was the star that he loved. The star that was Castiel, Angel of Solitude and Tears, who had fallen at his wish. The star who now would never see the gift that Dean had made for him, painstakingly.

Dean turned the scales over between his fingers, not sure what to do or where to go.

He didn’t want to go home, not yet. He didn’t want to swim. He didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything.

He only wanted to lie down, and have Castiel beside him when he woke, with blue, blue eyes.

He crawled over to the sandbar, leaving the necklace behind. Soon, he’d take it to the dunes.

He lay back on the sand, and whispered to himself.

 _“_ Coincidence,” he murmured. A single tear rolled down his cheek. “You, and me, and the sea, and the sky, all coinciding…”

**

The day slept, and night awoke to stand guard.

Dean stirred. He’d fallen asleep, but only barely. He was cold.

When he opened his eyes, the stars were shining. He roved his eyes over them, and then closed them again.

“Maybe I just looked at you,” Dean said. “Maybe not.”

The silence from beside him was a physical weight on his soul; a loneliness, a solitude that was almost too much to bear. It was going to be this way forever…

Dean swept his hands over the sandbar, trying to feel something that wasn’t hurt. The pile of treasures lay still and as useless as ever. Dean let his eyes roam over the familiar shapes, over the edge of the mirror, the book, the bowl, all a little pushed around and battered by the few waves that had been tall enough to reach this high up the rocks during the storm, and then down to…

Dean blinked.

The ring. The pearl and silver ring. Where was it?

Dean shifted, searching for the ring. It had to be here, didn’t it? Unless…

Unless Castiel had taken it back with him.

Unless Dean had meant enough to Castiel that - that he’d wanted something to remember Dean by.

Unless Castiel _cared._ Really, really cared. Even with his grace intact; even with his feelings dimmed by angelic power.

“Cas,” Dean said, and he was crying again - he never seemed to stop, recently. He was going to cry a whole new ocean of his own, to live in. He turned his face back up to look at the stars. “Cas. I don’t know if you can hear me - I guess that, uh. Since I’m way down here, and you’re way up there, uh. I’m just - what did you call it - another hopeless - something.” He ran his hand over his face, and tried to breath steadily. “But I have to tell you, Cas, I - I miss you so much. I miss you. And I - you know that I love you, don’t you? Yeah. Of course you do.”

The waves were a gentle susurration, comforting and good.

“Cas, I know I have to move on, now. But I don’t know how I can go back to - to what I was before. All I want is you, Cas - all I want is just…”

It was several moments before Dean could speak again.

“You,” he croaked. “I just want you. So I just - I gotta tell you - I made you something, Cas. I wanted to give it to you but I forgot, and then I was too late. Please - I know you don’t owe me anything - and I owe you my life, I owe you - so much, Cas, but - please. I have to ask. Please let me give you this one… one last thing. And then I swear I won’t ask for anything from you, ever again. You can go home and I won’t - I won’t bother you like this again. Cas - _please._ ”

Dean stared up at the sky, waiting for a star to move. He waited…

And waited.

And lay down.

And closed his eyes.

And waited.

**

Dean woke at the touch of soft, rosy fingers of light on his face. He scrunched his eyes up tight, not ready yet to face the day - a new day of being alone.

He’d stayed awake as long as he could, but there had been no _BOOM_ , no showering diamonds, no splitting fire down his back as grace fused with his body. There had been only quiet. Castiel had either not heard him - or else he had heard perfectly, and still decided not to come.

Dean let out a breath. He tried to feel at peace, and ignore the way that his heart was aching. This was the way that it had to be, from now on. There was nothing to be done.

There was a breath of movement, to his right -

“Dean?” said a voice that Dean knew, a voice that had his eyes flying open to find themselves looking into deep, deep blue. Blue deep enough for the seas themselves to drown within.

Castiel smiled.

“I thought you were awake,” he said.

Dean could only stare at him, utterly still. Completely motionless.

“Well,” Castiel said softly. “What were you dreaming about? You were smiling.”

Dean swallowed.

“You,” he said. “I dreamed… I dreamed you were beside me.”

Castiel’s eyes were warm.

“The best dreams,” he said. “The brightest and the best, are the ones that come true.”

Dean sat up in a single, fluid movement, and pulled Castiel into his arms. Castiel melted into him easily, naturally, as though their bodies had been made to rest together; he was wearing the clothes that Dean had found for him, and beneath the top his shoulder was a steady, warm rock. Dean clenched his hands into the back of Cas’ top, finding where the angel had ripped holes for his wings and gripping there.

“Cas - Cas,” he said. “ _Cas._ I didn’t think you were coming… I thought - I thought it was all done. I thought we were done.”

Castiel slowly, carefully moved his head. Dean could feel the angel burying his nose and mouth against the skin of his shoulder.

“I didn’t even hear you fall,” Dean said. Castiel laughed into Dean’s shoulder, the familiar soft sound tugging at his heartstrings, making his blood sing.

“When I choose to fall,” Castiel said, “I can be a lot quieter about it.”

"You chose...?"

"I heard your prayer, Dean. Your wish."

Dean gripped Castiel even closer. His fingers were tingling.

"I almost didn't say all that," he said. "I would've felt - like you didn't want to hear it, except - except you took the ring."

"The ring?"

"Yeah. The pearl one. It was gone, and I guess - I guess that made me think that you cared, or something."

Dean was glad that Castiel couldn't see his face; these words were easier to speak into a shoulder.

"Dean... I took nothing with me when I left. It was too painful. I thought the only chance I had to move on was to... to leave everything behind."

"What?" Dean almost pulled away, but Castiel's strong arm kept him close.

"I didn't take it. I looked for it, before I left. I think the storm must have taken it."

Dean let out a shaky sigh, almost a laugh.

"So you're saying that the whole reason you're here is because - the ring got washed away? We got that lucky?"

Castiel squeezed his arms tighter around Dean.

"Coincidence," he said, a laugh in his voice. "You, me, the sea, the sky, all coinciding..."

"We got so lucky," Dean said. He understood what Castiel had meant, now, that night when he'd been mad with fervour. He'd been amazed that they existed at the same time, since he had seen so much of the universe, and understood its infinity; Dean finally felt like he knew how Castiel had felt. "We got so lucky. We're so lucky."

When they finally pulled apart, they didn’t move far. Dean reached up a hand, and ran his fingertips light as anemone fronds over the side of Castiel’s face.

“Did - didn’t you have something you wanted to give me?” Castiel asked, leaning into the touch just enough to make Dean’s heart skip a beat. Dean’s fingers curled as he frowned, and then glanced in trepidation towards the edge of the rock where he’d left the necklace.

“Um - wait, I’ll just…” Dean pulled himself over and saw no sign of his gift. Had it been washed away by the waves, into the sea? Dean blinked back at Castiel, and then said with a cheeky grin,

“Give me a moment, would you?”

Beneath the waves, Dean took a moment to let out a breath. Castiel. _Castiel was here,_ and it felt like being able to breathe again. He didn’t know how long Castiel would stay - just long enough to give him the necklace, probably, like Dean had asked the night before - but it hardly seemed to matter when Castiel was _here,_ now.

And - Dean gave a little gasp - there, right beneath him on the rocky seabed, there was the necklace, his green and red scales shimmering in the sunlight. He dived for it, and then surfaced; Castiel was sitting to one side of their rocky home, the side where they didn’t normally go. Dean swam around and found a rock that lay neatly in front of where Castiel was sitting, flat enough to sit on; he hopped up onto it, keeping the necklace behind his back.

Castiel blinked at him, and then smiled. He looked beautiful, Dean thought, for perhaps the thousandth time. He looked so, so beautiful.

Dean stretched himself out, wanting to draw out the moment, have as much fun with it as he could. He grinned challengingly over at Castiel.

“Are you ready?” he said. Castiel raised his eyebrows.

“Ready,” he replied.

“Then,” said Dean, drawing the necklace out from behind his back, “I reveal to you… your gift.”

Castiel said nothing for a long, long moment. Dean’s confident smirk was fading, until he saw the blush growing on Castiel’s cheeks, and he felt his breath catch with happiness.

“Oh, Dean…” Castiel said, staring at the necklace, the way the shimmering scales caught the light. “Dean, it’s _so_ beautiful. I always thought your tail was the most beautiful thing…”

Dean spluttered over his surprise.

“What? No way, Cas, your wings - your… your whole _thing_ , you’re just - I’m not even…” It was Dean who was going red now, and he could feel it. He sat up, still holding the necklace out for Castiel’s approval. Castiel hesitated, and then spread his glossy black wings, and leapt lightly over to the rock where Dean was sitting, swishing his wings down for a little extra lift.

“Thank you,” Castiel murmured, as he knelt before Dean and took the necklace into his hands. He stared at it thoughtfully for a moment, turning it in his fingers, before closing his eyes.

“Cas…?” Dean said, as Castiel seemed to concentrate. “What are you…?”

There was a brief, sharp burst of light, bright enough to make Dean yelp. Castiel blinked, looking a little dazed.

“Cas… what…? Was that your grace? What are you doing?” A thought occurred to him. “Is this instead of your ice necklace, that broke?” Dean’s fragile happiness trembled a little at the thought of Castiel wearing his necklace, up in Heaven - keeping him close.

And then Castiel slipped the grace-filled necklace over Dean’s head, and settled it on his chest.

“Cas?” Dean said, not understanding. “You - you need this - you need this to get home, I don’t…”

“I am home,” Castiel said simply, and Dean _shuddered_ . Something in him that was broken seemed to shiver itself back into wholeness. “Dean, I returned to Heaven, and… and the first thing I thought was, ‘I am not where I am supposed to be.’ I just - being here, being - being _me,_ the me that feels, the me that lives, the me that - that loves you, Dean - that’s the me I want to be. I have the choice, and…” Castiel took a deep breath. “And I choose you, Dean.”

“ _Cas,_ ” Dean said, his voice breaking over the word. “Cas - this isn’t - are you - are you sure?”

Castiel reached out, and gently placed his hand on the side of Dean’s face.

“I have never been so sure of anything in my life,” he said.

“But - but Cas, we’re - we’re too different,” Dean said, battling himself, trying not to melt into the touch. “You live in the air, I live in the sea, how are we - how are we ever going to live?”

Castiel didn’t answer at once. Instead, slowly, he leaned forwards, his eyes on Dean’s lips. Dean was almost shaking with want.

“We’ll make it up as we go,” said Castiel softly, and kissed him.

The waves crashed in the background. The wind sighed, wistful, watchful.

Above, the sky soared; below, the sea dropped down for leagues and leagues. Not perfect mirrors of each other, yet similar enough - and meeting at the horizon in a long, loving kiss.

 

_The End_


End file.
